User:Rammer7

Alex Dakotah Taylor (born January 17, 1988) is a current student at Everest College going for his Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration. He was born in Springfield, MO, and has lived there his entire life. His hobbies are watching baseball and football, collecting baseball cards, and playing guitar. His favorite sports teams are the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Rams. His favorite athlete is Albert Pujols.

Childhood
Alex grew up in Springfield with his parents, Eydie Sanders and James Taylor. He attended Shady Dell Elementary, Pipkin Middle School, and Central High School. Throughout elementary and middle school, Alex had excellect grades. While he didn't match those superb grades in high school, he still worked hard and got decent grades.

Cancer Scare
In August 2005, Alex began having discomfort in his right knee after hitting a ball off his knee at a batting cage. At first Alex thought it was just a bad bruise, but after a few weeks the pain had not subdued, so Alex went to the doctors. After having initial problems with the X-Ray, Alex had a MRI done on the knee on September 15, 2005. By now the pain was becoming progressively worse. The pain was so bad by mid-September that Alex was forced to walk with crutches.

A week later, on September 22, 2005, Alex slipped in the hallway at Central which led to even worse pains in the knee. Alex was able to get around on his own until that night when he arrived home. The pain was so bad in Alex's knee that he was unable to make up the two steps to get inside his house. His mother drove him to the Cox North emergency room. Alex was there for nearly seven hours as he had a few x-rays done. Finally, at around 2 A.M. in the morning, the doctor came back to Alex's room to deliver the horrible news. The doctor told Alex that it was his belief that Alex had a condition called Ewing's Sarcoma. The doctor told Alex that Ewing's Sarcoma was a type of bone cancer that had an 80% survival rate. Only 1 in 500,000 people have Ewing's Sarcoma.

The next day, Alex and his family talked to his local doctor and got him set up with St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. Alex would depart for St. Jude's on September 26, 2005, on a scary trip, not knowing what would happen next.