SALT LAKE CITY — A 19-year-old artist from Ogden is using her own work to help pay for her medical care.
“That’s kind of what I try to do — I try to make other people happy,” Ebony Myers said about why she draws.
Her works of art, for the last three weeks, have been made while laying in a hospital bed at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City.
“The medicine, the pain, not my bed. I don’t really feel comfortable sometimes,” she said.
Myers has a genetic condition known as familial adenomatous polyposis, or F.A.P.
“What F.A.P. does is it causes cancer and it kills you,” said Mary Khalaf, Myers' mother.
Khalaf said most of her relatives died by the age of 26. She likely would have followed the same path, but she moved to Utah where a treatment was being developed at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
“We owe them everything. We owe them our whole lives. I owe them my baby, you know,” Khalaf said.
Myers is recovering from surgery, but her future is uncertain.
Rather than feel sorry for herself though, she started having her drawings displayed at Pure Oils in the Layton Hills Mall as a small way to help her family pay for her care.
“It’s just something that makes me happy,” she said.
More about her story can be found on a GoFundMe page set up for her here.
