Chemo-Personal Narrative

Everyone hears the word “Cancer” and automatically thinks death? Imagine being told you have cancer a month before Christmas and having to start chemotherapy right away. That was me at age 16 barely a junior in High School, they say high school is supposed to be a great experience. And it was at the beginning which was my freshman and sophomore year. I was that girl athlete with lots of friends who went day by day not caring about my health I would eat lots of junk food and stay up late at night. I come from a Hispanic family single parent my mom and 4 siblings 3 girls and one boy. Two had already gotten married and there was only 3 left at home including me. My mom would work out in the fields so sometimes she 'd come home late, therefore

“Yes, I suppose so. I am sorry for having told you this. I hope you won’t hold it against me. I only wanted to help.”

“How about I go back to Megan’s place with her and the other women, and she and I can talk till your return in the morning. That way I will be a willing hostage, until your friend returns,” Torin said.

It was a typical day in the McDougal household; my sister was acclimating to college life, my annoying little brother was pushing my buttons, and my only worry was whether I was going to pass my next bio test. My dad was getting ready for a business trip to Singapore but decided to stop by the doctors for a quick checkup for his abdomen. Scans came back showing that the bump on his belly button was metastasized Stage IV Liver Cancer. I was completely devastated and couldn’t comprehend how my role model could have so much chaos inside of him. It took weeks before I could go a day without crying as I thought about my future without one of my biggest supporters. It seems for every glimmer of hope for a new treatment, a new, insurmountable brick wall appears when the scans show the treatment’s failure. As cliché as it sounds, every day truly is a rollercoaster; some days better than others. However, we slowly have adapted to this new reality and have truly understood that falling down is a part of life, but getting back up is living.

“Sarah has cancer,” is a phrase that changed my life. I was barely ten years old when my dad picked me up from volleyball practice to explain why my little sister had been in the hospital so much. At the time, Sarah was eight and had been in and out of hospitals and various doctor’s appointments over the past two months to try and figure out what was going on. Learning she had cancer was both a relief and burden. The feeling of relief occurred because now we finally knew what was wrong, but it was a burden because you hear about cancer in the elderly, not in eight year-old girls that love sports.

At that point all I would ever hear from people was, “oh you poor thing”, or “I’m sorry!” The only thing I heard was people pitying me, but in contrary, those words and moments only sparked a strength that I never thought was achievable. I promised myself to turn those words that represented sorrow into drive to fuel that strength. The first memory that I realized that inner strength was when I was first told that I had cancer. I heard the door click open, five doctors appeared in their white coats, they would come in surrounding me at the hospital bed. I just laid there confused about why all of this was happening. None of them spoke for a minute. My guess is that they were trying to figure out how to tell a fourteen-year-old that she has cancer as if they expected me to start breaking down sobbing. Instead, my eyes refused to shed a single tear as just hearing the words, “ You have cancer.” Those three words turned my life upside down in a matter of a second. Then I proceeded to process them in my mind. Trying to calculate a solution as if it were a math problem. As if it was that easy, but I still managed to ask the question that I never

There is nothing anyone could have done. My sister didn’t mean to get cancer, and she couldn’t have stopped it from growing. I just wish things had happened differently and that my entire family wouldn’t be turned away from me now.

Despite my parent's divorce, I led a contented life. My dad lived in the outskirts of Denver, but his distance never kept him from maintaining an active role in my life. Back in Colorado Springs, I lived with my mom, little sister, and step-father. Growing up, I never felt that I truly fit in with any of my friends or even my family; like almost any other teenager, I felt awkward in my own skin. However, my focus quickly shifted away from myself. In November of 2013, my mother learned that she had Pancreatic Cancer. My bubble of protection from the world's problems promptly burst as I heard the diagnosis. My family did our research only to discover that the statistics were horrifying. The five-year survival rate for someone with any stage

When I was in 6th grade my Aunt Dana was fighting cancer, and had been for 3 ½ years, I supported her all the way through it. So we held a rally in Thompsonville to support her and show her how much she meant to all of us, and that if she could fight cancer and get up every morning knowing it could be her last than we can get up and fight our battles. She was my light in a very dark tunnel.

Have you ever feel like luck is not by your side.? That’s how I felt for many years. The environment in which I was raised shaped me into a resilient person and I’m thankful for that because I survived both cancer and my parents’ divorce.

In September of my junior year of high school, my mom told me for the third time that she had cancer. She had spent the entire summer coughing. It was a bad summer cold or maybe a stubborn case of bronchitis. No one could seem to figure out what was causing the cough. A late summer bronchoscopy finally solved the case. It was cancer. Calmly, she reassured me on that September day, “It’s an early stage cancer. They say it’s very treatable. We’ve been down this road before.” The next nine months was a road that no one in my family had traveled. Frequent doctor visits, chemotherapy treatments, and hospitalizations became our new normal. We painstakingly watched as each round of chemo treatments devastated and weakened her. Through everything, my mom was resilient, tough, and determined to live.

Have you ever felt so broken and lost that you believed you simply couldn’t keep going on in life, as if the barriers of your life caved in and suffocated the very existence in which you lived? This pain was all that I knew in the months following my grandfather’s loss to cancer in July of 2008. Fighting until his dying breath, it was a moment in my life that rocked and shattered my heart like fragile glass. His death required me to adapt to and appreciate life and showed me that no obstacle is to big overcome if you maintain hope and a positive outlook.

Everything in life can be associated with a color, happiness is a bright and inviting yellow, while sadness could be a dull and dismal grey. One afternoon, my twin brother, Chris, and I were sitting on the couch, smiling and laughing with one another. Vibrant shades of yellows and oranges surrounded us and made me feel safe and at ease. Our parents walked into the living room with somber looks on their faces, my mother looked upset. That was the day I found out my mother had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. The Russell’s lifestyle was challenged now with a horrible plague my mother was burdened with. The prominent color present in the house went from a warm red to a darker shade, a color I associate with the threat of death. Something about that didn’t sit well with me.

We were in the middle of June so it was a sunny day with a blue sky and clouds. As we are leaving for giselles doctors appointment everyone was just making jokes trying to be positive. When we get there everyone goes quiet looking worried. As soon as the doctor walks in he blurts out “So the tumor is big but removable” everyone's jaw drops and starts crying. My Aunt then says “ She has a tumor?” He says “ Wait didn't they tell you ? They were supposed to tell you” He tells us everything is going to be okay and surgery can fix this but it will take a couple of more months to shrink all of the tumor with chemo.

By the time we get to the house they’re already gone. I seize my phone off Sugar’s bed and try to ring them, no answer.