Benefit of the Doubt

When Hadiyah was very young, her parents passed away. This was something that was very impactful for her. She moved in with her aunt and uncle and lived with them until she went to college. She was a very bright young lady all the way through high school and never saw a C in her life. Her aunt and uncle raised her well and they helped her a lot in school. After high school, she went to Alabama A&M University to study physics. An upperclassman helped her decide to study that as her major. After she graduated from Alabama A&M, things weren’t going so well. Her aunt was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The worst part was that she refused to get treatment because of how painful and dreadful it was.Her cervical cancer was something that ravaged her for months and she didn’t believe the outcome would’ve been any better if she had gotten treatment. Soon after she died, her uncle was diagnosed with cancer too. The cancer also destroyed his body as well. She took a break in college to help him with his treatments. Things still wouldn’t turn out well for Hadiyah and her family. Her uncle finally passed away as well. At this point, you would think Hadiyah would become depressed and give up on her dreams, but she did the complete opposite. She used the sadness as strength and turned misery into motivation. She made it her obligation to find a way to help these cancer fighters with their battle in the future.
After Hadiyah graduated from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, she went on to study some new ideas of her own to solve the cancer treatment mystery. She was inspired by her aunt and uncle to make this the dream that she was determined to reach. She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in physics, which helped her advance in the creation of her treatment. She studied multiple things such as: laser treatments, immunotherapy, biomarker targeting, and drug delivery. All these things were major components of the overall focus. This overall focus was creating a safe and healthy laser treatment to kill cancer cells without harming other normal cells needed to survive. She got the opportunity to spend $1.1 million dollars to produce a technology that targets and treats the cancer present in the human body. It would take the average McDonald’s cashier about 64 years to make that much money! This technology is based on immunotherapy, which is the prevention of a disease with substances that stimulate the immune response. The immune system works to protect the body. It holds white blood cells, which seek out and destroy disease-causing organisms. She used biomarker targeting to detect the severity of a disease state. A biomarker itself, is a substance that indicates whether or not a disease is present. The targeting part is just finding where the disease is. With the specific type of technology that she is aiming for, she uses the theory of lasers as a method to enhance delivery past the skin barrier. She had to understand all of these complex ideas and concepts to develop the laser treatment she had always wanted. Even though it wasn’t an easy process, Hadiyah continued to pursue her dream of creating something innovative, and continues to strive for the greatest achievements everyday.