Six years ago, Philomath youngster Isabella Griebel was only a month past her 13th birthday when she received a cancer diagnosis. To be precise, it was Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer that attacks a part of a person’s immune system.
“As a 12-year-old turning 13, it’s like you’re becoming a teenager and you’re immortal, you’re invincible,” she said. “And then you’re hit in the face with mortality.”
Fast forward to 2024 and Isabella, she goes by Bella, will be among 105 students receiving diplomas Saturday at Philomath High School’s graduation ceremony. The event begins at 11 a.m. at Clemens Field.
GRADUATION COVERAGE Wednesday: Isabella Griebel battles cancer while earning a diploma with the Class of 2024.
Thursday: A graduation preview with a listing of all 105 candidates and biographies of this year’s valedictorians.
Friday: A photo gallery of Philomath High graduation candidates going on the traditional walk to other in-town campuses.
Saturday: Coverage of the ceremony with a story and photo gallery.
The road to one of life’s significant milestones was a bumpy one for Bella.
“Senior year has been the hardest of them all because I’ve definitely started to feel the taxing of the juggle of my life and all of it and so I haven’t been here as much as I’ve wanted to,” Bella, 18, said last week during an interview at the high school. “So sometimes it’s like imposter syndrome — like, I haven’t been here, it’s not gone the way that I thought because of everything that’s happened this year and so sometimes it’s like ‘do I deserve to walk?’”
Bella has worked hard to earn needed credits.
“There’s been so many times throughout my high school experience that I wondered if I’d even graduate,” she said. “I was behind on credits when I first came in because of missing freshman year and I had a few times when I didn’t finish a class because I was not there enough with physical medical issues. It’s been a whirlwind.”
The diploma walk across the stage will represent an important moment.
“With cancer, it infiltrates so much of your life,” Bella said. “There’s so many things I haven’t been able to check off because of it and so it’ll be an emotional box to check. It’s like, I’ve been able to do something normal, I’ve been able to do something that everyone does.”
As of last week, Bella actually needed to wrap up some work to get the final few credits that she needs for the diploma.
The daughter of Jon and Rachel Griebel and an older sister to two siblings, Bella had plans to begin classes at Philomath High as a freshman in the fall of 2020 after being homeschooled through the eighth grade. But then COVID hit and the on-campus experiences would need to wait a year.
So, she started at PHS instead as a sophomore.
“I was coming out of chemotherapy so even my experience with the world in general or just people was limited because I was in the hospital so much,” she said. “It was definitely an adjustment. It took me a while to find my people.”
Since the original diagnosis in 2018, Bella has seen the disease go into remission only to then suffer relapses.
“Usually with Hodgkin’s … you get the four rounds of initial chemo and then you’re good,” Bella said. “But that has not been my case. I’ve gone through traditional chemotherapy, I’ve done transplant radiation, immunotherapy — I have seen it all … they just keep trying.”
Just recently, Bella had a splenectomy with cancer in her spleen.
“I’m technically in remission but we are in a really hard place of having to make a decision,” she said.
The decision comes down to continuing on the current path or considering a donor stem cell transplant.
“That’s by far the hardest chemo-vacant therapy they can do for me,” Bella said. “So that’s not a fun thing to know, especially since I would probably have to sacrifice my first year of college to do that.”
The adjustment to attending classes on campus that sophomore year challenged Bella to consider how to interact with classmates about her cancer. The battle had impacted her, she explained, to the point of not knowing how much to share with people.
Bella said she was also feeling a distance with other students her age in terms of emotional maturity — cancer had definitely made her grow up fast — and she feared that there would be a degree of alienation.
By the end of her 10th-grade year, Bella had transitioned into a more positive comfort level. But then a relapse occurred.
“You finally start feeling like you’re adjusting to the school load and I had to go into radiation in Minnesota at the Mayo Clinic for four weeks,” she said.
Yes, that meant she had to finish out her sophomore year online.
“When I came back junior year, I was on pembrolizumab, the immunotherapy, which took me out of school for about two days every three weeks,” Bella said. “So, you know, I was a normal student for like two weeks and then I’d go up on a Monday or Wednesday every three weeks to get that.”
The treatments, which continued throughout the academic year, did not cause Bella’s hair to fall out and she said that in a way, that wasn’t a good thing.
“I looked normal and that almost at school made it harder,” Bella said. “Because when people look at me, they expect me to act a certain way or be the normal high school student and I’m not.”
Bella called the 11th grade her best year of high school.
“I really started to learn how to juggle that and who I wanted to be and all of that,” she said. “I was behind a lot but my teachers were always there, always accommodating. I was always able to get caught up and adjust here and there where I needed to.”
Still, there were the internal struggles.
“There was just still this kind of separation of myself and what I wanted my high school experience to look like,” Bella said. “It got taxing to start to try to juggle another relapse and all of these things on top of academic pressure.”
Bella plans to major in English with an emphasis in creative writing at Walla Walla University, a private Christian school where her parents once attended.
“Ms. (Janine) Luta and her English classes, I’ve always enjoyed them,” Bella said when asked about favorite subjects. “I’ve not been able to participate fully in them because of cancer and chemo and all that but I’ve enjoyed it and it’s like you take little pieces of how I’d want to teach a college class someday.”
Bella also has enjoyed culinary arts.
“I took a foods class sophomore year and I met Ms. (Keri) Bennett,” she said, “and the way she ran her class and interacted with her students definitely inspired me to pick the career path that I want to do, which isn’t high school education but it is education to try to go and get a Ph.D so I can teach in college.”
Bennett’s approach to teaching had a definitive impact.
“The connection that she brought to students — it was just life-changing,” Bella said. “It was like wow, you can reach so many people and so many young lives in the job that you have and I want to replicate that.”
After graduation, Bella plans to work at a summer camp. However, she’s not sure what will happen this fall — she could enter college or could undergo the stem cell transplant.
Said Bella, “I’m just hanging onto hoping that I’ll have a good summer and we’ll see what happens from there.”
Bella’s cancer is Stage 4, which means it’s advanced, but effective treatment could give her improved quality of life and extend life for several years.
“That’s one of the things that’s hard,” Bella said. “I told a friend once that sometimes it feels like I’m walking around with an expiration date on my forehead.”
Bella believes she can beat cancer.
“I have to keep believing that I will because I think your mental state affects the way your body responds in a lot of ways,” she said. “I have to keep believing that I will. But there are no guarantees.”
