During Her Leukemia Treatment, This Mom of 5 Danced Every Day for 15 Minutes — And It Saved Her Life (Exclusive)

Tia Stokes went viral for moving her body every day of her cancer treatment, regardless of how bad she felt: 'I wanted to show people I was still alive'

When Tia Stokes was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in April 2020 at age 34, her doctor told her to spend 15 minutes a day doing something that would help her fight the cancer.

She took his advice to heart. Every day during her fight — regardless of how she felt from her red devil chemotherapy treatment or while receiving a bone marrow transplant — Stokes got up and danced. During these few minutes, she'd film herself busting moves in the hospital room and upload them to TikTok.

"Leukemia Round 2 Chemo Day 3 had me really sick today. Cold chills. Nauseas. Headaches," Stokes, who now has 2.6 million followers on TikTok, captioned one of her first videos in May 2020, a month after her diagnosis. She danced alone in the hospital room, a port peeking out from under her shirt.

Stokes lives in St. George, Utah, with her husband Andy and their five children: Major, 15; Legend, 13; Maze, 10; Tazz, 6 and Rose, 4.

She tells PEOPLE she began dancing at 10 years old, thanks to her sister Irene, who was a dance teacher.

Stokes said she fell in love with movement and even dreamed of becoming a backup dancer. When she was 17 that dream came true when she had the opportunity to perform with Beyoncé at the Billboard Music Awards. From there, her dancing career took off. She became a choreographer and eventually opened a dance studio where she organized charity fundraisers.

"Who would've thought — all these years since 2007, I was dancing for people with cancer, donating to people with cancer or other illnesses, and who would've thought I would be diagnosed with a life acute myeloid leukemia?" she says, reflecting. "It was almost like I was preparing myself for what I was going to go through and preparing myself for the ultimate fight."

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'I had an hour to get to the hospital'

Stokes first noticed something was wrong with her health after giving birth to her daughter, Rose, in August 2019. She says at the time she was sick with flu-like symptoms including a cough, a sore throat and a throbbing head. As months went on, her sickness got worse.

"I'm also postpartum, so I'm thinking 'Oh, I just had a baby. My body's out of whack,'" she says. "And a couple of weeks later, my doctor ended up telling me to run a blood test."

When Stokes got the results back on April 24, 2020, her life changed. Her doctor diagnosed her with acute myeloid leukemia. According to the American Cancer Society AML is a cancer that starts in the bone marrow and moves to the blood.

She says: "My blood smears looked so bad that the doctors thought I was already in a coma. They told my husband Andy that they didn't think I would make it through the weekend because of how sick I had been."

That day Stokes recalls taking one last picture with her kids before Andy drove her to the hospital. She says: "I didn't want to tell my kids before I left because I didn't want them to think their mom was going to die. You hear cancer and it's very scary. So I wanted to leave them happy."

Later when her husband dropped her off at the hospital — he couldn't come inside because of the pandemic — they said their goodbyes.

'I was put in complete isolation'

For the next 31 days, Stokes remained alone in the hospital where she went through her first round of red devil chemotherapy. She lost her hair, had sores all over her body, couldn't eat and was on an IV. But through every hard moment, she danced.

Some of her favorite dances were filmed alongside her nurses. One nurse in particular would help move Stokes' bed to give her more room to dance.

"Day 20 fighting Leukemia," she captions a video of her dancing to a "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" remix in the hospital.

For Stokes, filming dancing videos on TikTok gave her a sense of community when her family and friends weren't physically around.

"My kids went through a lot during that time. They were without a mom for a long time with my husband, and I had a 7-month-old baby girl with whom I later had to develop a relationship again."

"I just think about my kids and it just brings me to tears. I just think of how much they went through, but how much they're recovering right now," she adds.

After her first treatment, Stokes was readmitted to the hospital for her second round of chemotherapy. This time she lost her ability to walk and developed a speech impediment. A month and a half later, she was diagnosed with COVID-19, which led to pneumonia and acute kidney failure.

"It was kind of crazy because COVID-19 was so new still and nobody had heard of a cancer patient getting COVID," she says. "I was put in complete isolation this time. I couldn't even be on the cancer floor because I had COVID. They didn't know what to do with me really, because I was pre-transplant."

She adds: "The chemotherapy was killing my body. I was neutropenic for a long time. That's like zero immune system. And I ended up getting, my brother became a 100% match for a bone marrow transplant, which I received on Dec. 2, 2020."

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'Show people I was still alive'

Through it all, Stokes didn't stop moving her body for 15 minutes a day. She says: "My main objective was just to bring joy. I wanted to show people I was still alive. I still had a heartbeat. I could still breathe."

Since her cancer journey began, she says her body has changed. Often, she adds, people online will comment mean things about the way she looks.

"Yes I've gained weight," she wrote on a video in March 2021. "I've also fought cancer/COVID/pneumonia/ 5 pounds of chemo and a transplant. I'm basically a superhero but yes I've gained weight. Thanks for noticing."

Despite the hate, her goal is to show the real and raw moments of her life. Recently she opened up about getting diagnosed with graft-versus-host disease, which according to the Cleveland Clinic occurs in bone marrow transplant recipients when the new cells attack the body. At the moment, she says, she is back on chemotherapy and steroids.

"I finally got cleared to be able to move away from my doctors a little. I still go back every 10 weeks for blood checkups right now," she says.

"But I'm around family now. And that's the only thing I wanted for my kids to have, to be around people that love them," she adds. "I have four boys that play football, so we're at four football games a week and soccer games, and they all dance and play. And so I'm living this life of what I fought for."

'I want people to see hope'

Having gone through so much in her life, Stokes, who's now a choreographer and motivational speaker, continues to post dancing videos on social media hoping to remind people to appreciate the small things in life.

On Dec. 1 she shared a dance on TikTok celebrating 1,307 days of fighting cancer.

"Hey TikTok, Remember when I did this dance alone in my hospital room," she wrote on another TikTok in November. In the video, Stokes stands on a stage dancing, and an auditorium of people follow along.

Looking back on her cancer journey Stokes says that if she hadn't danced every day in her hospital room, she probably wouldn't be here today.

"To this day, it saved my life," she adds. "It was something to keep me going, and a huge instrument in my healing process as well."

These days in her social media posts, "I want people to see hope," she says. "It's been amazing, the people that message me on the daily that are going through not just cancer, but other things, whether it's mental health or whether it's suicidal thoughts, or whether it's they got diagnosed with a different type of cancer or a tumor."

"Whatever it is, that's why I show up, is to help the one, there's one person out there that needs that hope, and if I did it, you can do it too," she continues.

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