Adia Lorenzo, a Hampton teen, pulled up to the Phoebus neighborhood in a stretch limo on a recent Saturday morning.
The 17-year-old had a bit of an entourage — her mother Nicole Carter; her siblings, sister Bianna, 16, and brother, Gabriel, 12; plus several friends and some other family members.
Sporting a curly cropped haircut and braces-laced smile, the bubbly teen emerged as cameras clicked and flashed. As about a dozen people, media and neighbors cheered her on, Adia wasn’t coming from Hollywood.
But she was definitely somewhat of a celebrity and a hero.
The Hampton teen was returning to her home from a morning excursion at the Escape Room to see her newly designed bedroom, courtesy of the Roc Solid Foundation.
The Chesapeake-based nonprofit, which began in 2009, works with children and families facing pediatric cancer.
In this case Adia, who is battling ovarian cancer, was the recipient of the nonprofit’s Play It Forward initiative, a program to surprise children ages 8 to 18 with a complete room makeover, including new furniture and décor.
With a renovation project that began Friday morning, Saturday was the big reveal. Adia, her friends and family trekked up to the second floor to see the new space: a freshly painted room, new bedroom furniture, dresser, desk, plush carpet and deep slate blue-colored walls — the same shade as Adia’s new kitten, Grayson.
As Adia stepped into the door, she immediately started crying. “Oh my gosh, it’s so beautiful … good vibes,” Adia said. “It’s perfectly fitted. I love it.”
Accents in the room included some pictures, a neon light in the shape of an “A” and other feline-inspired touches.
Adia’s mom, 36, petite with faint shadows under her large brown eyes, looked grateful and pleased at the results.
“You guys are super amazing and brave and strong for doing this,” Carter said. “You nailed it for her.”
Roc Solid partnered with Smithfield-based Gwaltney, which served as the sponsor, donating about $3,000 toward the costs, plus other gifts for the family. They include a new dining room set, a television, a gift card to Food Lion and a grill.
The project to redesign Adia’s room in the family’s two-story home in Phoebus began when a team of about a dozen volunteers from Roc Solid and Gwaltney gathered to strip Adia’s room. They prepped and painted the walls and tossed out the old furniture.
Roc Solid volunteer Taylor Romanczyk said the nonprofit works with local hospitals that match them with pediatric cancer patients. For children between ages 1 and 8, Roc Solid builds outdoor custom play sets.
“(When a child gets diagnosed) the first thing a child loses is their play. You can’t go to school. You can’t go to the park,” said Romanczyk, 27, who has been volunteering for roughly eight years.
She said the organization works with the community and local businesses, and has since completed nearly 400 Play it Forward projects around the country.
“There is hope out there, even if the situation is bad,” she said.
Days leading to the diagnosis
Adia thought she was pregnant.
For months, the 17-year-old, then a rising junior, was having some issues with missing periods and her belly seeming to swell day by day.
Problem was, Adia knew she was still a virgin.
“At first I didn’t know what was wrong. The middle of the summer last year, one weekend it started growing … my stomach was growing slowly,” Adia said.
Carter said Adia had a recent heartbreak, so she tried to assure her daughter that if she was pregnant, it would be OK.
“Are you positive? Is there anyway? I won’t be mad, if you think that’s what it is,” Carter said.
Trips to the doctor didn’t reveal much at first.
“They said it was constipation. Irritable bowel syndrome. No one thinks of ovarian cancer when you’re a 17-year-old,” Carter said.
But then the telltale signs of her condition began to surface one late night last July.
“I got a sharp pain,” Adia said. “It felt like something was stabbing me in my ovary.”
The pain was on her right side and woke her up with piercing pain that cut through the night.
Shortly after, during the early hours of that Sunday morning, Carter and her daughter went to Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk.
“When we got to the hospital, I didn’t get into a room until 12 o’clock,” Adia said, meaning it wasn’t until early Monday morning that she would be admitted.
More tests, and as Monday faded into Wednesday, Adia finally had surgery. Carter said doctors removed a 20-pound tumor, about 33 centimeters from Adia pelvic area.
“It was huge,” Carter said. “It had pockets of air and in a period of two days it had got even bigger.”
Carter and Adia said the tumor was the size of a decent-sized watermelon.
“Her particular cancer is so rare,” Carter said. “It was attached to an underdeveloped ovary. She was born with an underdeveloped ovary … and then it grew into cancer.”
Prayer and coffee
Chemotherapy began a few months after the surgery. Adia went through three months of treatments beginning in October, lasting five days each and every month through mid-December, Carter said.
The fatigue didn’t hit the teen at first, she said.
“It didn’t really hit me until the third … until the third chemo,” Adia said. “The second treatment was kind of creepy. In the room I was in it felt as if someone had died in there. The energy was so sad. The second chemo was kind of depressing.”
For Carter and the family, the ordeal was draining and diminishing.
“The day after her last treatment … we were all feeling the separation of the treatments,” Carter said. “A lot of people didn’t really know. I went into the hospital for a week, myself.”
Carter said when chemo started for Adia, everything just stopped and honestly at first, she didn’t tell anyone what was happening.
“I just kind went into a mode of going through the motions and keeping her safe … and going through chemo … and we were just kind of was isolated,” Carter said. “It just happened in a whirlwind. It kind of wore us all down.”
The diagnosis also came at a horrible time in the family’s life, Carter said. The mother of three said she and her husband, a Navy officer away overseas, had been going through a divorce.
“It all happened in the same year and it’s kind of impacted the entire family in many ways,” Carter said.
Meanwhile, as Carter and Adia battled the chemo and cancer at the hospital, Bianna and Gabriel held down the fort at home.
“Bianna was mom No. 2, juggling two households and she was doing the extra cleaning … for five nights a week and that was once a month,” Carter said.
Carter said other times Adia had to be back at the hospital for various surgeries to implant a chemo port.
“I didn’t really want to have people to feel sorry for us,” Carter said. “I thought initially that the thing to do was to stay strong, stay positive but toward the end of it … I was running on empty and doing it all myself when I should had been possibly reaching out.”
Brighter days ahead
Carter said that Adia has had two CT scans since completing chemotherapy and so far seems to be in the clear.
She was enrolled in a home schooling program and is completing summer school. She plans to return to Phoebus High School for her senior year this fall, where she can rejoin her peers, Carter said.
“She did lose some friendships. Some of them had to retreat,” Carter said. “It’s hard for an adult to comfort another adult and some of the kids didn’t know how to.”
Meanwhile, Adia is enjoying her summer and has been working at Paradise Ocean Club on Fort Monroe. As family and friends enjoyed a barbecue, Adia said her dream is to become a veterinarian.
“I am working now as a dishwasher, 22 hours a week,” Adia said.
Carter credits support from her church, close friends and family, but most days it was Adia’s strength that helped her.
“She was the one who kept me strong. She was fearless, every time,” Carter said. “What do you do other than prayer and have faith? What else is there? God gets me through and my kids. Prayer and coffee.”