To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hockey Fights Cancer, the NHL is sharing stories of those in the hockey world impacted by the disease on the 25th of each month all season long. Today, the story of Stella Adams, a cancer survivor and longtime Carolina Hurricanes fan, and her daughter, Danielle Adams.
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Stella Adams apologized in advance to people sitting next to her for “hollering and carrying on” when the Carolina Hurricanes hosted the New Jersey Devils at PNC Arena on Jan. 25.
It was Adams’ first hockey game in-person in nearly a decade, and nothing was going to stop the 65-year-old Durham, North Carolina, resident from screaming, shouting, dancing and cheering on her beloved Hurricanes.
Her daughter, Danielle, sat to her right with her 2 1/2-year-old daughter Layla, at her first hockey game, sitting on her lap. It was a party, three generations enjoying a fun night at the game.
“Oh, it was the best,” Adams said. “(Layla), at first, was just clapping but then she got the prompts, and she would go, ‘Let’s go Canes!’ Oh, that was priceless, because ‘Caniacs,’ we’re a demonstrative group of fans. She got to understand all of our moves.”
The night was also a celebration of Stella surviving multiple myeloma, an incurable but treatable cancer of the body’s plasma cells, the white blood cells that make antibodies that fight infection.