Knoxville’s atheist community is not what you think >>See page 2
UTOP campers climb to new heights >>See pages 6-7
Junior Makayla Claussen has been cancer-free for a year and a half. Brandon Crawford • The Daily Beacon
Student cancer survivor finds purpose in diagnosis Savannah Gilman Staff Writer
Vols welcome new offensive coordinator >>See page 11
Volume 128 Issue 22
Fresh out of a Chem 120 exam, Makayla Claussen, junior in kinesiology, sat working the desk at The Studio in Hodges Library. “I think I failed it,” she laughed. Involved in Campus Disabilities Advocates, the Gamma Beta Phi Honor Society and the Black Cultural Programming Committee, Claussen comes across as your average, overworked college student.
But for the last year and a half, she’s also been cancer-free, a detail which sets her apart from her peers. “A lot of people think ‘cancer’ and they think it’s over with,” she said. “We all do. We hear someone has cancer and we see the bald-head — it’s cancer, it’s scary.” Claussen was in her sophomore year at UT when a case of mono that she couldn’t seem to shake turned out to be something much more serious. Examiners at UT Medical soon discovered
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the presence of an abnormality in Claussen’s blood indicating the presence of Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis. A rare immune system disorder, HLH affects 1.2 people per million and is typically found in children. When Claussen was found to carry the disorder, however, she was 20 years old. “We went to Vanderbilt by ambulance,” Claussen recalled. “When I arrived at Vanderbilt, I died on the table four times and I was on life support for two months.” See CLAUSSEN on Page 3
Monday, February 9, 2015