[新聞]A Dream Comes True for 16-Year-Old Alicia Lang
罹患遺傳疾病的女孩 Alicia Lang，夢想成真與莎娃見面的小故事~。
http://0rz.tw/9b4KW (裡面有照片)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
By Erin Bruehl
For Alicia Lang, it started as just a dream and turned into
reality – and one of the best moments of her life.
Lang, 16, has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects
the lungs and digestive system. A defective gene and its
protein product cause the body to produce thick mucus that
clogs the lungs and affects the pancreas, stopping natural
enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food.
About a year ago, she was in the hospital at Cincinnati
Children’s Medical Center in Ohio, and when people from
the Make-A-Wish Foundation asked her what she would like
to do, Lang knew exactly what she wanted.
She wanted to come to New York City, come to the US Open
and meet her favorite player, Maria Sharapova.
And on Monday night, her entire dream came true, as she
met the 2006 US Open champion prior to the Opening Night
festivities honoring all 40 US Open champions.
On the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National
Tennis Center, the Langs were brought to meet the tennis
star. Alicia spotted Sharapova as her family walked towards
her, and when the star turned around, she greeted Alicia
with a big hug.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Sharapova said, as she bent
down to hug Lang.
The three-time Grand Slam champion, not playing in the 2008
US Open due to an injured shoulder, proceeded to ask Lang
if she had seen other players around the grounds, if she
liked Arthur Ashe Kids' Day and how much she plays tennis.
Alicia said she just plays for fun now but her brother
Nick, 13, plays in tournaments.
“So I’ll see you here in a few years?” Sharapova told
Nick of the US Open, bringing smiles and laughs from the
Lang family.
She gave Alicia a signed photo, and she also signed a
framed photograph, a racquet, as well as an article written
about Alicia in 2005 and a hat for Nick, who also has cystic
fibrosis but a milder case.
After a few minutes with her idol, Alicia was moved to tears
and almost speechless. The meeting went just as she had pictured.
“It was the perfect greeting (the hug),” Alicia said.
“She commented on my outfit, she said it was cute. She
was so nice and so tall.”
“It was pretty fantastic,” added Mary Kay Lang, her
mother. “It was nice of her to take a few minutes to
spend with us.”
The Make-A-Wish Foundation provided Alicia and her family
– her parents, Jim and Mary Kay, and Nick – the airfare
to New York City from Cincinnati, lodging for three nights,
a shopping spree at Macy’s and sight-seeing.
It was then through fundraising efforts and donations
around their home that the Langs were able to raise the
money to afford to stay in New York for the Open after
the three days provided by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
And it was through the combined efforts of the USTA,
the Midwest Section, including Executive Director Mark
Saunders, and the Midwest Youth Tennis and Education
Foundation that the Langs were provided tickets to Arthur
Ashe Kids’ Day, as well as the day and night sessions for
Day 1 and Day 2 of the 2008 US Open.
A former Midwest Section volunteer knew Sharapova’s agent
and then helped make the meeting with her happen this past
June. Alicia was originally supposed to meet Sharapova at
Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day after her scheduled press conference.
“I just sat there. You don’t think when you hear something
like that,” Alicia said when she heard the news the meeting
with her idol would happen.
Alicia also is a big fan of Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic
and loves Sharapova because of her on- and off-court activities.
“I just really like her,” she said of Sharapova. “She
does all this other stuff, and she’s good.”
But then came the news in early August that a shoulder
injury would keep Sharapova out of the US Open. Alicia,
Mary Kay and Nick were at the Olympus US Open Series
tournament in Cincinnati, when Jim called Mary Kay to tell
her he had heard Sharapova was not playing at the US Open.
They told Alicia that night.
“I just said ‘What?’ like 10 times,” Alicia said when
she heard the news. “I said, ‘Are you serious?'”
Last Sunday, just a few days before the Langs were due to
arrive in New York, the Langs received an e-mail from
Saunders detailing the trip, and they discovered the
meeting with Sharapova was still possible.
“We assumed all along (since hearing of her injury) that
she wasn’t going to be here,” Alicia said. “It was a
huge relief.”
Alicia was also carefully able to work out her hospital
stays so she would be able to make the trip to New York.
She is in the hospital for two weeks at a time about
every three or four weeks for intravenous antibiotics
to help her breathing and kill the bacteria in her lungs.
Born with the disease, it was diagnosed when she was five.
Neither of her parents have the disease, but both are
carriers of the gene.
In addition to the hospital stays, Alicia has three
treatments a day for 24 minutes each using a nebulizer,
which is like a pipe that is plugged in, to breathe in a
mist that helps break up the mucus in her lungs.
To help her digestion, she needs to take pills whenever
she eats food with fat to help her body break up the fat.
In fact, because her body flushes through fat, she has to
eat a very high-fat diet. At night, she gets 1,500
calories in a formula inserted directly into a G-tube
in her stomach.
She also has CF-related diabetes and has a diabetic pump
that provides insulin, so she does not have to have
needles everyday. And because her IV treatments are so
frequent, she had a port inserted under the skin under her
arm to attach the IV to.
Unlike Alicia, Nick has not had a hospital stay since 2001
and does not have a G-tube or a pump. He plays tennis
competitively at tournaments on the regional level,
whereas Alicia no longer does. The two started playing
tennis when Alicia was in sixth grade, and she played for
her middle school team.
Now Alicia will be a junior at Lakota West High School
this fall and takes some electives online but takes the
rest of her courses at school. A sport she enjoyed, both
Alicia and Nick randomly ended up playing tennis.
“Nick was playing baseball, and I said I wanted to play
a sport,” Alicia said. “I looked through the newspaper
– I was looking up places near our house – and I saw
tennis.”
The Langs first had contact with Sharapova three years
ago after an article was written about Alicia and how
much she liked Sharapova in the Cincinnati Inquirer. A
family who knew Sharapova read the article and contacted
the reporter, asking how to contact the Langs. In response,
Sharapova sent Alicia a few Nike shirts, a sweat jacket –
all with ‘Maria Sharapova’ on the label – some hats, as
well as an autographed racquet.
But the best part of the presents was a handwritten note
from Sharapova that said, "You are such an inspiration to me."
On Monday, Alicia got to hear it in person.
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