Colon Cancer: A Short Story

Losing my mother, the most important person to me , was a life changing event that altered the way I see the world. Knowing that she is in a better place and at peace is everything I could've wanted for my mother. As me and my siblings grow older we miss her more every day. I have learned never to take someone for granted because we aren't promised forever with them. We have to make the most of who and what we

I knew that my mother needed a solid support system and optimism in the atmosphere, so that is what I gave her. My mom would struggle with making meals like she always used to, found it hard to go to my school activities, and seemed to be a completely different person because she was so physically drained. It was incredibly hard to see my mom in so much pain. I would stay home to be with her because I hated to leave her alone. My mom getting cancer made it hard for me to focus in school, sports, and I failed to be a typical teenager by not being with my friends very often.

My grandmother, who is the mother of my mom, passed away due to heart failure at the age of 87. Since I was 6 or 7 she had been living in our house. The reason for that was, my grandfather, that I was named after passed away a year before I was born, so she was alone, and she was starting to get old. Since she lived with us for so many years, she had been a very important figure in my life. I can honestly say that she was like a 3rd parent for me, and losing her, made me fell horrible and helpless. I witnessed how real death is because of her passing. Combined with puberty, my grief caused me to become depressed for a long time. As I’m looking back it sounds really extreme, but there were some days that I did not even leave the bed thinking that there was no point to our existence. Thanks to some psychological counselling however, I was able to overcome that mental

Everything is perfectly fine, everything is great, then one day it all comes crashing down and shattered pieces are left. My life would never be the same but I guess change is for the best and it forced me to become the person I am today. It’s rough to be the oldest child, especially when your mom is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and you have 3 younger sisters that look to you for comfort when their mom can’t be there. When the cancer is spread throughout your moms body doctors can’t just get rid of it no matter how badly you wish they could. Rounds of chemotherapy only slow it down, yet it’s still there a lurking monster waiting to reappear at any given moment. Nothing can even begin to describe the fear I felt, and still have to deal

When I was a sophomore my mother was diagnosed with cancer and as a result, I have spent most of my college career dealing emotional with the result. She is free of disease as of right now but it was a long and tumultuous journey to get there. I practically spent 2 years without a mother because she was so sick and I had to take her role. I organized family events, cooked them meals when I could, did their shopping all while going to school three hours away and having constant fear that my mother and the love of my life was going to die. That is only my personal struggle with it, not even taking into account her trauma or my fathers or brothers. It almost seems selfish to reflect on this because it was nothing compared to what she was going through. I went through stages where I was horrified and so scared and then I was angry and selfish. I wanted my mother back, I wanted her to make me dinner when I came home from college and send me care packages again. I wanted her to go shopping every weekend like she used to and spend money on things that weren’t hospital bills. I wanted to call her and hear something other than how she couldn’t get chemotherapy that week because she was so weak and was rushed to the hospital for a blood transfusion. I was tired of talking to people about it and people asking if I was okay. I felt like a broken record, “Yes, I’m okay. Yes, school is

There are over 100 types of cancer. One type is called colon cancer, a very common disease in the lower part of the digestive system. Colon cancer is luckily very treatable if caught early, but because it is so common it is the second leading cause of death from cancer. About 140,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with colon cancer every year.

Losing someone who is close to you, usually happens to everyone. The difference between people when this situation occurs is how you live after it has happen. My six word memoir was “looking up and hoping you’re there”. My aunt unexpectedly passed away last year in April. No one really understood and to be honest, I still don’t understand why this would happen. I got called up to the office, and my mom picked up my brother and I. She was taking us to the hospital to see her. I didn’t know what state she was in. Then we were brought to the Critical care unit, my heart sunk because I knew this wasn’t good. I prayed and prayed to God that it this wasn't true. By the time we got there, she was considered brain dead. A little background with my

The Diagnosis for many especially those who are the diagnosed can be the scariest thing. Seeing this first hand with my grandmother who did not want to tell anyone of what had happened it was tough. I was a little less then fifteen when I went to live with my grandmother for a short time. She quickly showed me things like cooking and gardening and the value of hard work so when I overheard her talking to my grandfather about having to get chemo the next day I was beside myself. She finally told me the next day about her diagnosis. Though we may care for those diagnosed seldom do we ever truly know what they are going through? I mean how often do you have things you

A Journey in Grief: A Mothers Experience Following the Death of her Daughter by Alice W. Terry describes how the loss of someone so dear to you is unimaginable. When I was thirteen I lost my grandmother. She had been sick for a long time; I remember going to visit her in the hospital many times before she passed. The death of my grandmother was my first and only personal experience with the loss of a family member. Although this reality makes it hard for me to relate to this article at a personal level, I am truly grateful for the health and well being of those closest to me. Only being thirteen at this time, I was old enough to comprehend what had happened but I had not been old enough to truly experience the sorrow of losing someone. When I lost my grandmother, all I remember doing is crying. Although I was expressing emotion and grieving her loss, I do not remember having a conversation about what happened. How was I feeling? What is going through my head? Looking back now, it is frustrating to accept the fact that no one truly knew how to comfort me.

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.

For my mom, the last six months has been a fierce battle against cancer which was discovered in her breast. First there was the mastectomy to remove the tumorous breast and then the chemotherapy

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.

I cannot describe what I felt when my mom told me she had cancer. I was sad, I was scared; I did not even know if I felt anything. My mom, however, stayed positive and hopeful while I stayed quiet and seemingly apathetic. There was an obvious ironic contrast between the emotional state of me and the woman who actually had cancer.

Many people think after you put you're loved one to rest that your grieving period is over. People think you’re suppose to just overcome this terrible lost of your loved one within a blink of a eye. What people don't realize is loss changes our lives dramatically. Whether its denied, ignored or resisted, it doesn't go away. Living Through Personal Crisis, gave me comfort for myself for when I experience a significant lost or crisis. It also gave me a better understanding on how to be supportive of someone who is grieving. I learned that you have to let go of time expectations, recognize that grief comes in many different stages, and to rests on telling them how strong they are and just to be that friend with patience to just stand along side them.

I can still remember vividly the day my mother passed away. My mother passed away at a critical point in my life when I was seventeen years old from a short term illness. She was sick for a week and I remember thinking this could be serious, however, my mother declined to go to the hospital because of the distance and financial hardship. I had loss my father when I was three years old, so my mother was a single mother. I have step sisters and brother, but I was not particularly close to them. Losing my mother was a defining moment in my life for it changed my life irrevocably. I was devastated, but I had to become strong, proactive and it spurred me to choose a new career path.