A nervous Kim Palmer gives her speech about her eight-year-old daughter’s brave fight against Wilms Tumor, a kidney cancer, at the Relay for Life benefit. As she finishes, tears brim her eyes because she knows the fight isn’t over yet.

“I feel like there is a lot I didn’t know going into this journey that I wish I had,” said Mrs. Palmer. “Now I have an opportunity to share those things with other people.”

EAST students held this benefit on Friday, March 29 in the indoor practice facility. It lasted for 12 hours, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Relay for Life is one of the many ways these students have raised money for the American Cancer Society.

“I decided to talk at the relay because we have gotten to know some of the Har-Ber EAST kids and Mrs. Lamb and I really love what they are trying to do,” said Mrs. Palmer. “We wanted to help a really good cause and some really great people trying to make it happen.”

Mrs. Palmer’s daughter, Kaylee, has been fighting this tumor for three long years.  After having surgery to remove the affected kidney, radiation, and six months of chemotherapy they thought they had beaten the tumor. Six months later they found out she relapsed.

While they have to go through treatmaent again for a year, Mrs. Palmer, Kaylee, and the rest of their family are trying to keep a positive outlook.

“I think the best way we’ve found to get through treatment is to find ways to make it fun and make it part of our lives,” said Mrs. Palmer. “We have things and people we look forward to when we go to Little Rock for chemo.”

Hearing Mrs. Palmer’s story wasn’t the only thing offered at the event. Teams and clubs set up booths providing a various amount of things ranging from games to food. All proceeds from the booths collected were donated to the cause.

“We had a booth with games,” said English teacher Mrs. Katy Moore. “I decided to participate in the relay because I thought it was really cool that students put it together and it was a great cause.”

EAST students started planning this event over the summer. Senior Crystal Hernandez led the team as they planned this event. They even went to a conference in Nashville, TN to get mentoring and to see what they could do for the cause.

“I chose this project because I wanted to do something impactful my senior year,” said Hernandez. “Helping the American Cancer Society seemed like a good way to do it because I’m helping out a lot of people because unfortunately cancer is very common now.”

While the team is still calculating exactly how much money they raised, they still made an impact on students and their charity.

“I feel like I made an impact because I showed Har-Ber students that even though we are teenagers we can still help out big organizations and that they can have fun doing it,” said Hernandez.