The memory never left him.

At barely 12, Jared Dearth sat in a hospital room on the children’s floor of J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital clutching a stuffed monkey he’d chosen from a selection a hospital staff member brought by his room. He didn’t know then, but he would carry that little stuffed animal through his life in more ways than one.

“I squeezed the life out of that thing while I was being poked and prodded,” Dearth remembered.

When asked what the experience of receiving a terrifying diagnosis does to you as a child, he pauses.

“It definitely makes you more resilient. Empathetic. You feel like you can handle anything.”

Dearth had been at a WVU basketball camp in Morgantown that summer when he started seeing double. His eyes went blurry. He felt sick. A trainer noticed and called h

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