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North senior wants to make a difference
The Edmond Sun
EDMOND — Looking into Lydia Huff’s steel blue-gray eyes, one would not guess she has fought a great fight and won. She is full of life now, but it wasn’t always so.
Growing up, Lydia was an active student, but as she was getting ready to begin her freshman year in high school she started looking pale and feeling lethargic and unmotivated.
“A week later my condition worsened, my lymph glands became swollen, and I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia,” Lydia said.
A military brat by her own definition, her parents took her to Tinker Air Force Base where, after blood tests and X-rays, she was sent to The Children’s Hospital at University of Oklahoma Medical Center on June 1, 2004. There she was diagnosed with leukemia and spent the next two weeks.
Early diagnosis and proper medical attention helped Lydia go into remission in August 2004. Then she began her 2 1/2 year regimen of chemotherapy sprinkled with the prayers and support of the nursing staff, her mom and dad, Cynthia and Toby Huff, her family and her friends. She finished the chemotherapy treatments in December of 2006.
Monthly visits to the hospital for check-ups the first year led to a clean bill of health; now she goes every two months.
“Without the support of the school counselors, I don’t know how we could have made it through those two years,” her mother, Cynthia, said.
Those next two years were not easy for Lydia but she never gave up.
“When I first got Lydia as a sophomore some days she would come to my office worn out,” said sophomore counselor Patty Bray. “Sometimes she would just have to rest, but she would get up and go back to class.

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