ANKENY GRADUATE: Senior sets sights on graduation despite health battles | News

Ankeny High School's class of 2011 gathered at Drake's Knapp Center Sunday for commencement. More than five hundred seniors received their diplomas.
High school graduation is easily one of life's major milestones, but especially for one Ankeny student.
"We are so incredibly proud of Dyamond. She has worked so hard. She is so determined. She sets goals and she achieves them no matter what it takes," said Diane Ott.
What it's taken for her daughter, Dyamond, to celebrate this day with her classmates is a battle few of us can imagine.
When Dyamond was six years old, doctors discovered her liver was failing and so were her kidneys. By eight grade she had to leave school to have an organ transplant.
"It was difficult being out of school because your friends go on and you kind of stay back," said Dyamond.
Dyamond spent months in the hospital, and her recovery was complicated.
"The first year was really rough. Because a year after transplant, she got post-transplant cancer and had to have her spleen removed," said Diane Ott.
By 10th grade she had recovered enough to return to school.
"I've said ever since I was first gone in eighth grade that I was going to graduate with my class because that was my goal," she said.
But this year her health suffered yet another blow.
"The last two years have been great until January, and that's when we got the diagnosis that she got a brain tumor," her mother explained.
Doctors were shocked, she said. The brain tumor was unrelated to her transplant and among the rarest types. So amidst prom and senior pictures, Dyamond underwent thirty radiation treatments and continued to fight.
"Positive thinking goes a long way. Positive thinking and prayer will get you where you need to go. It's gotten Dyamond to where she is today," said Diane Ott.
And as she's checking one goal off her list, Dyamond is already busy setting her sights on another.
"I plan on going to school to be a Child Life Specialist which is someone who helps sick kids," she said. She says she hopes to share her story to help other kids who are in the hospital "keep a positive outlook."