Lauren Hill, Mount Saint Joseph basketball team's playing guard, was diagnosed with brain tumor but is still positive to continue her love for the game.
Hill, a college freshman, was diagnosed with Diffused Intrinsic Pentene Gleoma (DIPG) last fall.
"I wasn't playing normally," Hills told NBC's WLWT. "I was dizzy and disoriented and wobbling around and not catching balls."
Two weeks after school has started and two days of testing, doctors diagnosed Hill with DIPG, a cancer of the brainstream that primarily affects young people and children. It is a brain disease that gives a patient less than two years to live.
The diagnosis shocked the young athlete but her first question was not about her illness but the question of she can play ball.
From Hill's recent brain tumor scan, it showed that the tumor is growing faster than expected. Doctors were not sure if she can make it past December of this year. The basketball team's coach found a way to make the 19 year old athlete's last wish and asked the NCAA for an exemption from the rule specifying that games not to start until mid-November. Fortunately, NCAA moved the game up to Nov. 2 and be played at home.
"I never gave up for a second even when I got a terminal diagnosis; never thought about sitting back and not living life anymore," Hill told Local 12 in Cincinnati.
Hill's incredible courage moved and inspired many people that the university decided to move the game to a larger venue to accommodate an expected larger crowd.
Devon Still, Cincinnati Bengals' defensive player, came to visit Hill on Tuesday morning and the two swapped jerseys. Still, whose 4 year old daughter, Leah, is battling cancer met Hill and hung out with the optimistic lady after her basketball training.
Hill's strength over brain cancer as described by Still is "beyond inspirational" and said the swap would be "the most memorable that I will ever have."
