Meg's Story...Press Clippings

Huntsville Times, The (AL)

August 12, 2007
Section: Enjoy
Edition: 2
Page: 8W

Fighting cancer, Meg Ingram chooses to 'deal'
MARY ANNE SWANSTROM Enjoy editor

Meg Ingram has had a pivotal year for a 20-year-old. She pledged Pi Beta Phi at the University of Alabama last spring. She gave up her position on the Crimson Tide cheerleading squad. She found her calling, switching her major from business to nursing. She is not reticent about the reason. "This," she said matter-of-factly, pointing to her head.

Meg had a brain tumor removed last year. She underwent radiation and chemotherapy afterward, and the tumor didn't regrow. But a new one did. "Everybody has to deal with different things," Meg said. "I have a choice: I can either deal with it or not, and so I deal."

Her zeal for living is being recognized by the American Cancer Society on Saturday night at A Summer Lights Celebration, the organization's annual gala. Meg is an honoree along with Gerald Tucker. She takes her new work as a role model seriously. Meg organized a team of her Pi Phi sisters to compete in a kickball tournament for Camp Smile A Mile, a camp for kids with cancer, and raised $750 herself of the $2,000 garnered by the whole fundraiser.

Meg adores Tuscaloosa - "It's the greatest city on earth" - but her college career has to take a detour momentarily, to best fight her illness. She took a chemotherapy treatment just last week, and she always hopes the one she just took will be her last.

"I realize it's a part of my life right now, and as soon as I get done with it, I can be as normal as I want to be," Meg said. That includes taking her fall semester classes online, getting daily doses of Little Rosie's yellow queso dip and banana popsicles, and receiving all the love her parents, HJ and Lance Ingram, and her sister, Madalyn, 17, can heap on her.

"You learn to really appreciate every day, every moment, your family," HJ Ingram said. "Challenges like this can bring so much stress and division in families, but for us, we realize how special and important we are to each other." Mary Anne Swanstrom, Enjoy! editor