A Colorado School of Mines senior recently diagnosed with leukemia graduated in the halls of his oncology ward in a surprise ceremony put together by his care team.
David Boylan’s sister says he is an outdoorsy 21-year-old who loves hiking and camping. He was about to graduate a whole year early from the Colorado School of Mines with a degree in chemical engineering when the shocking diagnosis upended his life.
Days before graduation, Colorado School of Mines senior David Boylan got a stomachache. When it intensified, he went to urgent care and then the ER, where a high white blood cell count raised serious concerns.
“Within those labs, they saw something wrong with his blood counts, being his white blood cell count and his hemoglobin, his platelets, and within that determined that he was pretty high risk of having some kind of blood disorder at that point. And that’s when he got sent over to us, and that’s kind of our specialty,” said Alex Meier, a registered nurse in the UCHealth Bone Marrow Transplant Unit…