At 7, leukemia survivor has climbed higher mountains, but BYU’s Y means the most

As 5-year-olds do, Sadie Mortensen fixated on a single topic: Y.

No, not “why,” though that would have been the more logical subject of her preoccupations. Why did she have to get sick? Why do her muscles ache all the time and her stomach hurt? Why does she have to take this gross medicine? Why can’t she step out of her hospital room until the halls are cleared of people or see her friends? Why me?

Sadie wondered about those things, but she didn’t dwell on them. That wasn’t in her perpetually sunny-side personality. What she did dwell on was what it would be like to stand at the top of the giant, white Y built onto a steep hillside above Provo. She’d see it out the car window nearly every time her mom or dad drove her to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City from Payson, where her family had relocated because their home in Wyoming was too far from a hospital and Sadie had taken too many helicopter ambulance rides.

Sadie especially liked passing by the Y at night, when it glowed. Once she asked her mom where the light came from, and Lauren Mortensen replied that people hiked up to light it. That hasn’t been the case since BYU installed LED lights on the 465-foot-tall letter in 2016. Still, it seeded an idea that took root in Sadie’s ever-optimistic mind.

“It’s been a goal since I got leukemia,” Sadie, who turns 8 this month, said. “I’d been talking to Mom for a while, like ‘Can I please hike the Y yet?’”

Birthday surprise

Rice Krispie treats sat uneaten. Not a nibble had been taken from the array of fresh cookies.

There’s never a good time for a leukemia diagnosis. On your fifth birthday, though? That may be among the worst.

Lauren Mortensen noticed the lump in Sadie’s neck a week or so earlier, but it was July 2020, when medical facilities were discouraging in-person visits to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19.

In telehealth calls, doctors told Mortensen that swollen lymph nodes were normal. Then, one day, the lump was, Mortensen said, “really obviously not normal.” She pressed Sadie’s doctors to take an in-person look. They did and immediately referred her to a hospital.

Two days later, on her fifth birthday, Sadie lay on a gurney in a sparse room while doctors delivered the bad news. Sadie had T-cell leukemia, a very rare and aggressive form of blood cancer in which mutated white blood cells — those typically responsible for protecting the body from infections — multiply uncontrollably. She would have to stay in the hospital for a month and undergo years of chemotherapy and steroid treatments. Her immune system would be ravaged.

Also, much of her medication would be delivered via an intravenous port, which had to be surgically installed that afternoon. That meant no birthday treats. But the 5-year-old worried it might mean something worse.

“It’s very scary,” Sadie said, “because I knew that there was a possibility of not waking up.”

One more switchback every time

Sadie was awake. Not only was she awake, she was restless.

Sometimes she would tiptoe across the hall and sneak into the room of another little girl battling cancer. Other times she would dance til she nearly dropped in the “disco room.”

She wasn’t better, she was just consistently buoyant.

“She was obviously affected by everything, but she would come into the clinic enthusiastic and bubbly and even be racing the nurses up and down the hallways,” Mortensen said in an email. “Then when her labs came back, her iron would be so low that the doctors said other kids with those levels can hardly stand or stay awake.

“Her energy and joy often tricked us all.”

And so it was that, not even a year into her treatment, Sadie’s parents caved to her persistent requests to try to climb the Y.

The trail to the top of the Y gains 1,074 vertical feet in 1.1 miles, an 18.5% grade. On the first attempt, she struggled to the second of 12 switchbacks before the pain in her legs became too much to bear. She described it as a “shooting, shocking pain.” When she moved, she said, her muscles felt like they were being ripped apart. That was layered atop a constant, throbbing, achy pain from the chemo-caused atrophy of her muscles.

Still, as with her battle with cancer, she wouldn’t be deterred. She took her bad-tasting chemo pills. She went on smaller hikes with her family, which includes her 3-year-old brother Charlie.

“I learned that every time that I take my medicine, I would get stronger and better at doing hikes like the Y,” Sadie said. “So we would try almost every year to go to the Y when I had leukemia. And I would get like one more [switchback] than last time every time.”

Linn Thomas, the nurse assigned to Sadie during her treatment at Primary Children’s Hospital, said she didn’t know about Sadie’s quest. Still, she has seen cancer patients benefit greatly from setting goals beyond prevailing over their illness. And, she said, overcoming leukemia and hiking up a mountain really aren’t all that different.

“Leukemia treatment can very much be compared to a big hike or journey,” she wrote in an email to The Tribune. “There are moments that will be extremely hard and grueling but the payoff is worth the fight. Patients and their families often have a hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when they are in the thick of it, just as you may feel when you are still miles from the summit. But yes, the end result makes the journey worth it and being able to look back at what you accomplished is an amazing feeling.”

On Nov. 30, after more than two years of rushing to the hospital whenever she got a fever, of rising at 5:30 a.m. to soak her sore legs in the local rec center pool before anyone else got there to lessen her risk of exposure to COVID-19, of saying no to playdates and birthday party invitations, Sadie swallowed her last chemo pill. Then, as is tradition, she rang the bell to celebrate the end of her treatment.

Seven months later, on June 9 — nearly three years after she was diagnosed with leukemia — Sadie loaded her backpack with water and snacks. She pulled her auburn hair, which had grown back after falling out during her treatment, into a braided ponytail. Then she and her dad, Jared, set out on the now familiar path up Y Mountain.

The first few steps felt as difficult as ever. Yet she took a few more. Then a few more.

“It started out harder,” she said. “But when I made it closer to the top, I was like, ‘It’s just a couple more breaks and then I can do this.’”

And she did. Of course she did.

“It felt very good,” she said. “And it felt like I can do anything.”