Peachtree City Woman Beat Leukemia, Then Built a Nonprofit for Sick Kids

• Peachtree City, Georgia resident Megan Mulvey survived acute lymphoblastic leukemia, 51 rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, then founded the nonprofit Box of Hope to support other metro Atlanta families facing pediatric cancer.
• Doctors found 14 fully matched potential bone marrow donors for Mulvey, an unusually high number, and her oncologist credited her CrossFit training at CrossFit PTC with preparing her body for the transplant.
• Mulvey and the CrossFit PTC community are hosting a fundraising workout called 51 for Aubrey on October 24, open to anyone who wants to do the workout with them.

One Morning She Just Decided

Megan Mulvey did not draw up a five year plan for her nonprofit. “I wanted to create something to give back,” she told Fox 5 Atlanta. “And so, literally, one day, I woke up, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this.'” The this was Box of Hope, an organization she built out of her own leukemia treatment to help other metro Atlanta families cover the costs that pile up around a child’s cancer diagnosis. At CrossFit PTC in Peachtree City, where she trains, every workout still doubles as a reminder of what she survived to get back on the floor.

Mulvey had been training at CrossFit PTC for about 18 months when a growth beneath her right eye turned out to be a tumor. Doctors soon found additional tumors around her heart, lungs and chest. The diagnosis in October 2023 was acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a fast moving blood cancer that accounts for roughly 28 to 30 percent of all childhood cancer cases nationwide and, increasingly, shows up in adults training and working full lives around it.

Fourteen Matches, One Chance

Finding a bone marrow donor is often the hardest part of a leukemia patient’s treatment. National Marrow Donor Program registry data shows that a White patient searching for an unrelated stem cell donor has roughly a 67 percent chance of finding even one fully matched donor. Mulvey’s search turned up 14. Her medical team selected a 19 year old donor from Germany, and Mulvey underwent her transplant in April 2024 after enduring 51 rounds of chemotherapy to get there.

Her oncologist told her the training she had put in before her diagnosis mattered more than she realized once treatment started. Transplant conditioning regimens are punishing on muscle and stamina, and Mulvey’s CrossFit background gave her a base of strength and cardiovascular capacity to draw on through the worst of it. She beat the disease in 2024, closing out a stretch that started with a strange growth under her eye and ended with her walking back into the same gym that helped carry her through it.

Turning Survival Into Box of Hope

Mulvey’s husband lost his job twice while she was in treatment, a detail that shaped what Box of Hope became once she had the energy to build it. Rather than focus only on medical bills, the nonprofit was built around the non-medical costs that quietly bankrupt families over the course of long pediatric cancer treatments: lodging near a hospital, gas and parking for daily drives, groceries, and the income a parent loses when they have to leave a job to sit in a treatment room. “Just knowing what they’re going through at such a young age, and knowing what the family probably has to endure, is just awful,” Mulvey told Fox 5 Atlanta. “And it’s just something I felt led to do.”

She brought the CrossFit PTC community into the effort early, turning regular class time into fundraising workouts built around her own recovery story. Members who never met a Box of Hope family still show up, put in the work, and donate the entry fee, which is close to how most CrossFit charity events function nationally but carries extra meaning at a gym that watched one of its own go through treatment and come back.

Fifty-One for Aubrey

Box of Hope’s next fundraiser is scheduled for October 24 at CrossFit PTC, a workout called 51 for Aubrey, named for Mulvey’s own chemo count and dedicated to a child the community is currently supporting. Anyone can register and do the workout alongside CrossFit PTC’s regular members, whether or not they belong to the gym, which is the model Mulvey has leaned on from day one: turn a private medical fight into something a whole room can show up for.

The workout format has not been finalized publicly, but past Box of Hope events at CrossFit PTC have built the movements around Mulvey’s own numbers rather than a standard benchmark, so entrants can expect rounds tied to 51 in some form, whether that means 51 total reps of a movement or a chipper broken into pieces of that number. Coaches at the gym scale every movement for members who are not regular CrossFit athletes, which is part of why these fundraisers pull in parents, coworkers and neighbors who have never set foot in a box before showing up for a friend.

The financial gap Box of Hope is trying to close is well documented nationally. Families affected by pediatric cancer often need both medical and social support long after treatment ends, and the non-medical costs of care create what researchers call financial toxicity, a burden separate from the hospital bill itself. In metro Atlanta, most children fighting leukemia are treated at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which sees more than 500 newly diagnosed pediatric cancer patients a year and where roughly one in three families travels 40 miles or more just to reach a specialist. Five year survival rates for pediatric cancer have climbed to nearly 85 percent this year, up from about 58 percent in the 1970s, which means more families are living through the years of bills, drives and missed paychecks that come after a diagnosis, not just the diagnosis itself.

Mulvey is still training at the same gym, still showing up for the same 5 a.m. classes that got her ready for a transplant she did not know was coming. The difference now is who she is training next to, and who is standing at the finish line of 51 for Aubrey waiting to hand her the next family’s name.