She was a newlywed by six weeks, and she was on track to earn her Doctor of Pharmacy degree by 2019. But for Julia Gardner, the hopes and dreams associated with her six-week-old marriage to husband Michael, a 2014 Cedarville alumnus, and her future career were put suddenly on hold. On the day before she was scheduled to begin the professional pharmacy program at Cedarville, Julia was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Gardner withdrew from school to focus on her treatment, which took approximately two and a half years. She spent 90 days in the hospital, received more than 30 blood and platelet transfusions, and moved back in with her parents for 24-hour care.

She finished her treatment in December 2017 and has been in remission since. She re-enrolled in the Cedarville School of Pharmacy and completed her degree program in May 2020, just one year after she had originally planned. She is now working as a first-year pharmacy resident at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. 

In the midst of her treatments at Cincinnati Children’s, Julia was inspired to do something for the kids she saw with cancer diagnoses, so she started Julia’s Jammies. Julia’s Jammies has collected 5,200 pairs of children’s pajamas, which have been distributed at 17 hospitals in the last five years.

“The first month or so of treatment consisted of us realizing how life-altering this diagnosis would be,” Julia explained in a Cedarville public relations story in 2018. “I was basically quarantined from friends and family for a whole year. It was tough, but I knew God was sending me down this road in order to grow closer to him.”

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To give to Julia’s Jammies, visit the Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/juliasjammies/.