Blood Cancer: A Short Story

The first matter that I felt after I skipped Kinder 2 was happiness. First, I was happy because the number of my school years now is smaller.

William Tyndale was born in 1494 in Gloucestershire, England. His family moved to Gloucestershire in the 15th century. He started to get an education at the Magdalen Hall. He studied theology after he got his Bachelor Degree and Master Degree. They moved to Gloucestershire most likely because of the War of Roses. His family came from Northumberland. Tyndale has two separate family trees. His brother Sir William Tyndale was knighted when the Prince of Wales and Catherine of Aragon got married.

I hated him by then. All the pain and disappointment an alcoholic father brings into a family is deep and it is wide. It was decided that he was to be laid out in his World War II army uniform. He was a Warrant Officer. Not bad for a man with only an 8th-grade education. I removed it from its plastic and noticed the buttons were tarnished. I spent hours making sure his uniform looked right and his ribbons presentable. Since at the time, the only one who was not married or had children to take care of, my mother demanded that I stay at the funeral home when the other family took a break. She did not want someone who came to pay their respect not to be acknowledged by a family member. So I was volunteered. No one ever came in the unscheduled viewing hours so I spent the time rearranging flowers and talking to my father, making sure his uniform was looked good.

The last time I had spoken with him was around lunch time when I left school. We had an early day so I always called him just to make sure he’s okay. I gobble up my breakfast and head to school still with my dad on the brain but I’m sure he’s okay.

Soon enough preschool was over and here came our elementary school days. Everyone met many people in kindergarten. Many will be my friends throughout high school and beyond. Kindergarten was filled with arts and crafts, my portfolio, 2008 handprints, and stamped tee shirts. Suddenly kindergarten graduation was here, everyone was paired up and danced with a partner. First grade flew by and then came second grade with Ms. Foisy and Ms. Okabioshi. Ms. Okabioshi was one of the best teacher assistance we have ever had. Third and fourth grade with Mrs. Schuler and Ms. Ittes. These years were filled with warm fuzzies, a lot of reading and writing, and a lot of fun playing on the playground. The class watched Shilo and everyone hated the evil father. After that came fifth grade with Mr. Sifferman, also known as Millie’s cousin, he gave the hardest tests we have ever taken, but the most fun and memorable times we have had. After that year many people changed schools, I moved to California.

Well, not quite. She doesn’t say cancer right away. Mom and Dad don’t know all the details yet, and Mom doesn’t reveal the cancer part right away. But she tells you that Henri has to have his kidney removed. And that’s scary. It’s scary to me and I’m seven years older than you are. Your little brother has cancer. You’ll cry, right there in the car, with Henri’s friend Ava in the back seat. Mom will cry a little too. Mom will cry a lot in the next year, she’s just as strong as Henri is. You get home and Henri is in the front lawn. He got to go to Burger King for lunch, in between his tests, and he got a green dinosaur toy. He’s just sitting there, playing. Happy. Looking back on that, I know now how miraculous that is. How incredible bravery is amplified by youthful innocence. You won’t understand that, and that’s ok. There are a lot of

“There are a couple different treatments we could do, however I personally think that the chemo is our best option. There will be a long hard road ahead of us, but I think we can do it! Now your cancer hasn’t spread yet and that’s why I think it is best to start as soon as we possibly can. Here’s what we can do…” the doctor went on and on and on. It was so hard to (even (omit)) grasp what he was saying. So much was running through my head. I was beginning to cry again, but this time I in a private room instead of in front of a waiting room full of people. “Why don’t we go for a little walk. Maybe to get a snack or something.” Caleb thought it was a good idea because he figured I needed to just get away from all the talk of chemo and treatments and well, cancer. He could see the fear in my eyes. “I’m so scared.” I thought I was crying as hard as I possibly could but boy was I wrong. “I know you are, and you have the right to be, it’s a scary thing. But you know that I will be here for you through everything, okay. I’m not going anywhere.” The doctor said I needed a good support system, and man did I have the

Dexter’s Pub, in Dexter, is no doubt so named for being a favorite dining destination for locals and visitors in-the-know for its modern take on elevated pub grub, served in a relaxed and friendly setting. The oven baked asiago cheese seasoned with pepper and thyme and served with toast points and the honey chipotle pub wings make ideal starters. Some of Dexter’s Pub’s specialty entrée dishes include the Pub’s famous baby back ribs served bare or slathered in barbecue sauce, the Pub special pizza topped with sausage, pepperoni, ham, veggies and secret sauce and the seafood mac and cheese with crabmeat, shrimp and a breadcrumb topping.

After a while of sitting in my grandparents living room mindlessly playing with my toys I decided to get up. I walked towards the commotion going on in the small hallway connecting the living room to the kitchen. The gathering of people consisted of my mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma. Curious about what was going on I walked over to the group. I reached my mom and looked up to see that her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had been crying. I looked over to my dad and his face, like everyone else's, was grim. During this time I kept hearing one repeating word, cancer. I started to listen more closely to the conversation going on around me because even at the age of seven I knew that cancer was bad news. I listened intently and heard my mom explain how she had colon cancer.

When I turned 11-years-old my whole childhood began to change my life went from being perfect to everything but perfect. One day I came home to hear the news my father, my best friend; my hero was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. Not knowing the struggle my family was about to take on I just began to cry. I had a million things running through my head what’s going to happen? Will everything be okay? Why him? What is going to happen? With all these things rushing through my head all I could do was cry not knowing this was least worse to come.

I went to my living room to ask my mom a question, to see she wasn’t there. I asked my brother “where’s mom?” and he replied with “shes at the hospital, grandpa got burnt.” I would never have expected “grandpa got burnt” to be as severe as it was. I remember my mom coming home around two in the morning. I got up and out of bed to ask some questions. She said “I don’t wanna talk about it right now. Pack some stuff up, we’re going to Waterloo tomorrow.” So I listened and packed up a bag.

Learning that school is something to be glad about was one aspect I will never forget. School helps spark and form the character of discovery in one’s mind. To find problems in the world’s society and attempt to fix them so future generations will not be forced to make that same mistake. Other than social media, education is the most powerful tool to train an adolescent’s mind. Coming from the Nobleboro Central School I have this story. The first trimester was a long one, I had never presented a project before and didn’t know the first thing about talking out loud in front of a class. Also, my English was considerably bad with papers handed in, in rough draft form. My English is still a little rusty, although my past teachers have guided me past the few trimesters preparing me for an average High School paper. Concludingly, the first trimester of public school was a real learning experience with mostly a C average in most of my classes which left room for improvement. The second trimester I had an understanding of school and was trying more and more on improving how I could understand teachers. This time of education at public school was the aha moment wherein I could explore the true reasons of presentations, tests and open book exams. The third and final trimester was a matter of consistency in grades. Because of this, most of my trimester average grades were in the B+/A range. Thankfully, because of this I had finished the 8th grade with most subjects having a yearly average of a

The end of school came eventually, and I abandoned dreams of the sixth grade. Luckily, I was transferring to another elementary school, but this offered me little consolation. Only dummies have to repeat a grade.

I remember thinking about how fortunate I was for having none of my family members to die from cancer. It was just another late night of working hard in the laboratory trying to find something. It was precisely 10 o’clock at night where I had never felt so accomplished. I had finally done it, I found the cure to cancer. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes when I had been reading the chart, but when I gave the antibodies to cancer patients their symptoms left and their cancer had been cured. I was 35 when I had found the cure and I lived in Iowa City, which is where I met my wife. I called my wife, Selena, and told her about my discovery and she started crying. It was a different type of cry..no it wasn’t tears from joy, it was tears from sadness. I asked Selena why she was crying. That day was never forgotten, not because of my discovery, but of the news that my wife told me. Our son passed away that afternoon from Lung Cancer. I was devastated. I went into a deep depression and I kept asking myself, “why couldn’t you have found the cancer just a couple hours earlier.” My story was all over the news, for awhile I never cared about anything but my son. I had received an extremely high number of money. I didn’t care about money anymore. I gave over half of it to people who needed it more than I did. I didn’t feel like doing interviews until about 6 months after his death. I learned something from my experience, In order to achieve your goal, sacrifices will need to be made. I found the cure to the most deadliest thing in the world but I had lost my most prized

As he finished the soup, Mr. Jones dumped out the food that he didn’t eat and took the can, placed it into his bag and walked out the door. The yard was a few miles walk, but he and everyone else needed the money so no one minded. The soup cans, bottles, papers and boxes were all recyclable. But what did that matter when the scrapyard would take them off your hands for 20 cents a can? Mr. Jones always had the mindset of money being a priority and besides, one cared about the environment anyway right? This was about today. Mr. Jones wouldn’t live long enough to see nature burn, so why would it matter to him anyways? Men with a mindset like his were successful. Maybe not popular among the common folk, but when you’re at the top, the smaller peasants