Last day to be eligible for the Early Bird Prize when you get your ticket for the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) -Right now, you can get your tickets for the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway.

A $100 ticket puts you in the running to win a brand new home in Bryan, with all of the money raised going straight to St. Jude Research Hospital to further their mission of ending childhood cancer.

The home is located in Rudder Pointe in Bryan and has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s valued at around $300,000.

The money raised when you reserve a ticket helps fund research and treatments at St. Jude, that help patients like Diana.

“I was diagnosed when I was living in Honduras with my family, and my doctor actually was the one who contacted St. Jude for us from Honduras,” Diana said. “Only 10 days after they were contacted, I was in St. Jude getting my first chemo.”

She was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia and proceeded with more than two years of chemotherapy.

“During that time, one of the chemos gave me a reaction and a part of my brain swelled,” Diana said. “I was paralyzed from the neck down for three days.”

Doctors were able to revert the paralysis and Diana was declared cancer free after two years and nine months of treatment. However, her battle still was not over.

“At my 8-month follow-up, we realized that I had relapsed,” she said. “The cancer was back and it was stronger this time so the only treatment for this time was a bone marrow transplant, which is very hard to find a match.”

Luckily, they were able to find a match in December 2017.

“It was a very hard process,” Diana said. “The body kind of tends to reject the cells and the transplant and my body kind of crashed. I was in the ICU for about a week. During that time, my health deteriorated to the point where my family was told to prepare for the worst. Thankfully, I was able to go back to a normal room. Now I’m here, and that was five years ago.”

Now, Diana is a college student. She says she is here today because of St. Jude.

“You get to become more than just patient and doctor, or patient and nurse,” she said. “You get to become a family and they help you go through the entire treatment. In a month, it’s going to be nine years since my original diagnosis. I’m able to be here. I’m in college. All of that is able to happen because of St. Jude and without St. Jude, I wouldn’t be here.”

Tickets for the St. Jude Dream Home can be found online.

Tickets bought on or before April 27 qualify for the Early Bird Prize of a Carnival Cruise for two.

Tours of the home are every Saturday and Sunday from April 29-June 4.

Saturday: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Sunday: 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.

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