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MANTI — Kelsie Albee learned more during her senior year than most of her classmates will in their lifetimes.
"The class of 2016, this motto (#albeestrong) has carried me through and has been an emblem through this year," Albee said.
She got a lot of support through the hashtag, along with the Facebook page Keep Keepin' On #albeestrong.
“I think I learned more from this battle than I would have being enrolled in school," said Albee, who graduated Friday, "so I am grateful for an experience."
When school started at Manti High School last fall, Albee was at Primary Children’s Hospital. She had been diagnosed just three weeks earlier with a cancerous tumor on her liver, forcing her to give up being president of the speech and debate team and the business club.
From the start, Albee's classmates were pulling for her, posting signs in the hallways at school and putting decorations on her locker. Manti High's first football game of the season was dedicated to her cancer fight.
“It made me feel like I had a team rallying around me," she said. "They were cheering me on. I didn’t feel so forgotten."
Albee faced several rounds of chemotherapy, and the tumor, which she said was the size of a cantaloupe, was removed in February.
She faced serious complications as she recovered from her surgery, but the chemotherapy worked. Doctors found her cancer was gone.
“They have you ring the bell and sing your song, and that means that you’re done, and that means that you did it and you get to go home and you get to be done with that little trial of your life — big trial of your life — and move onward and upward,” Albee said.
While Albee was in the hospital, she was voted homecoming queen, was the school’s Sterling Scholar in business, and just last week received word she is the national winner of the Heart of the Arts award from the Federation of State High School Associations.
“They made me feel like I wasn’t alone, and they just kept cheering me on," she said of her classmates. "It gave me some motivation because I wanted to (do) school activities. I wanted to try to participate as much as I could because I truly felt like I was missing out on some truly wonderful people."
Now as a high school graduate, Albee is reflecting on much more than her high school education.
“It could have been easy to become bitter, to think of all the things that have been taken away from me, to think about all the experiences, relationships and friendships I could have had," she said. "But the entire journey as a whole has given me more than it has taken away."
Albee's cancer is in remission, but she will have a scan every 90 days to make sure it has not returned. In the fall, she will be hitting the books again, this time as a freshman at Snow College.
