Edmonton high school helps ill girl, 8, fulfill a bucket list wish
EDMONTON Janaya Chekowski-McKenzie’s first day of high school at M.E. LaZerte began like many students’ — with her picture and name imprinted on an ID card.
Unlike most students, her day ended on stage wearing a pink graduation dress with beaded flowers, where she received a diploma and tossed her tasselled cap into the clapping crowd.
On Wednesday, the eight-yearold girl from Beaumont crossed another entry off her bucket list — one her family is racing through.
Janaya has an aggressive, inoperable brain tumour called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). She was diagnosed in February, said her mother, Amanda Chekowski. In September, they found out an attempt to treat the tumour with radiation had failed.
Although she’s trying an experimental treatment, Janaya’s mom doesn’t know if her only child will make it through the school year.
After the crushing diagnosis last February, Janaya and her stepfather scrawled a bucket list on the back of a medical document. She wants to meet celebrity Ariana Grande, create a My Little Pony villain, go to Hawaii, and try indoor skydiving,
Chekowski wants to see her daughter graduate. Janaya’s already received a Grade 6 graduation certificate from her school, Bellevue, in Beaumont, and zipped through middle school in a day at John D. Bracco Junior High.
When M. E. LaZerte teacher Angie Tomlinson heard the family ’s story, she asked principal Kim Backs if the northeast Edmonton high school could make it happen.
“We said, ‘No question. Absolutely,’” Backs said Wednesday. In about a week, school staff had a schedule worked out — Janaya would spend about 20 minutes alongside LaZerte students in classes with teens, creating a poster of the musculoskeletal system, learning a dance, baking cookies in the foods lab, sewing an eye mask and constructing a doghouse, among others. The cookies were her favourite part, Janaya said.
Cosmetology students did her hair, and then she flipped a coin for a volleyball game and refereed the players for a while.
Then, staff rolled out an orange carpet in the theatre, which Janaya walked on to meet EdmontonDecore MLA Chris Nielsen, who handed her an honorary Alberta high school diploma.
On her blog, Chekowski said the median lifespan for a person diagnosed with DIPG is a year. She said she doesn’t want to go to her nieces’ and nephews’ graduations in the future knowing Janaya never had that chance.
“There’s a good possibility that it’s not something that we’ll be able to experience, with the timeline that we have,” she said Wednesday.
Staff and students embraced Janaya on Wednesday, speaking with her in class and tweeting good wishes for her to the school’s Twitter account, Backs said.
On Thursday morning, Janaya’s family is flying to Disney World to cross another entry off the bucket list. When she returns to Beaumont, volunteers are putting on an early Christmas celebration for her.