NASHVILLE, Tenn. -
After years of treatments to fight Leukemia, a Williamson County girl wants to make sure no other child has to go through the same thing.
Lily Hensiek was diagnosed with the disease when she was just seven years old.
"She had been having a fever, back pain for the last couple of days," explained her mother, Larisa Hensiek.
Lily began an aggressive round of chemotherapy immediately following her diagnosis and for two-and-a-half years, underwent treatment forcing her to be hospitalized several times due to infections and fevers.
The treatment kept her out of school for more than a year.
"It made me feel uncomfortable because I thought I was going to die and I didn't want to lose my hair. When I lost my hair, it made me feel bad because everyone made fun of me, and I didn't like that," Lily told Nashville's News 2.
While in the hospital late one night, Lily asked her mother why her treatment could not be "just one pill and one shot."
It was a question that the young girl's mother could not answer, however it quickly became the mother and daughter's mission to help raise money to find a cure.
"That's when we said, ‘Alright, let's do something about it,'" Larisa Hensiek said.
Lily originally announced to her mother she wanted to raise $100 for the cause but Hensiek encouraged her daughter to dream bigger and a goal of $1 million was decided on.
"I thought, 'Oh man. One million dollars is a lot of money,' but we said, 'Alright, we can do it, a million dollars that's what we're going to do,'" Hensiek said.
In the three-and-a-half years since launching Lily's Garden and hosting events, Lily and her family have helped raise $300,000 for cancer.
"We're not stopping until we make the goal, and I hope to surpass the goal at some point," Hensiek said.
Lily told Nashville's News 2 she is warming up to the idea of being called an inspiration.
"It just makes me feel really happy because I want to be one," she said.
Lily's Garden has already distributed seed money for a Vanderbilt doctor's research on childhood cancer.
Read more at LilysGarden.org.
