Community of musicians turns young girl’s sketchbook and cancer journey into a song

CHICAGO (WGN) — Make-a-Wish Illinois has granted countless bucket list moments for kids, but one recent wish took a village. 

There’s that old saying that a song is words brought to life through a melody. And that is a perfect analogy for the story of 12-year-old Kamila Santiago.

Against the backdrop of sterile walls and beeping machines, Kamila sketched pink hearts, glowing stars, and the first words of her story.

She was in the middle of a PE class and playing basketball when she noticed a bump on her leg. It was a bump that ultimately landed her in Lurie’s pediatric cancer ward for 14 months.

“When you hear that your child has cancer, it’s a word you never want to hear,” her mother, Tania Santiago, said.

“The chemo made her feel very sick and nauseous. It was terrible,” Kamila said.

Through it all, she kept writing —and that’s where her story takes a twist, as Make-A-Wish Illinois shared her sketchbook with Chicago composer Benjamin Martin. Immediately, he went to work creating a score out of Kamila’s words. 

“It comes across so deeply how grounded she is by her family, by her faith, and by all these wonderful systems of support,” Martin said.

He handed the song over to conductor Scott Edgar, who rallied Lake Forest College’s orchestra, band, and choral group to practice Kamila’s masterpiece. 

Over the months as they practiced, Kamila’s chemo continued until the day she finally got her storybook ending and was declared cancer-free.

“Then you see the end of the story that God did the miracle,” Tania Santiago said.

And WGN News was there when Kamilia and her family visited Lake Forest Concert Hall to witness her story morph into a song.

“Being here with Kamila today is life-changing for all of us,” Laurie Honza of Make-A-Wish Illinois said. “We see it through the beauty of music.”

“To see something created that’s larger than ourselves, especially when there’s a lot of folks coming together to put pieces of it together,” Austin Atteberry of Sing Me A Story Foundation said.

It was a collective celebration of a young girl’s triumph with a perfect ending for the girl who lived the story worth singing.