How Has Cancer Affected My Life

In the fall of 2012, my mother almost succumbed to her illness. I had just begun my freshman year of high school midst angry conversations between my parents and the threat of separation. It would seem as if they bickered about the most irrelevant things, almost as if they had no other reason to fight other than the fight itself. Those moments were excruciatingly lonely, my father worked until the dead of night and my mother would come home exhausted from treatment. I now know that there was no one who felt more unvalued than my mother. I wish I had the ability to iron away this blunder that destiny had fabricated, however foolish this desire is.

We all have those moments that will change not only our lives and hearts forever. The past six years of my life have been filled with these moments. When the word cancer was first introduced to me, I had no idea what an impact this disease would have on my life at the time.

I sat there in my room with tears flowing down my blush pink cheeks. Wondering what was wrong with me, as a salty tear ran along my dried out chapped lips. I thought to myself,” Why am I so miserable? What did I do to deserve this? How am I going to escape this life?” I started to ponder that this was the end of my life, this is how I was going to be, sorrowful. At the lowest point of my life, mother came barging through the door with the look of cavernous concern on her face. She knew that it was time for something to be done, whether I agreed or not.

That day when I returned home from school, my mom’s boyfriend called me asking to speak to my grandmother. Typically, Gus would call my grandmother himself if he wanted to speak with her, which was rare. I found out about my mom going to the hospital from my grandmother after that phone call. The doctor told my family that a stroke afflicted her in the middle of the day. My mom confused the date with her birthday, had trouble getting words out and remembering our family member’s names. The nurse had to take her for walks periodically and exercise her legs and arms because they were weak. Seeing my mother in this condition made me appreciate my mother and everything she does for me tremendously. However, I was terrified for my mother’s health.

During my sophomore year, I became depressed and antisocial due to problems in my life. My mother has been sick with a brain tumor since 2009 and she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2012. It has been very hard on me and especially for my mother. I worry about her because she has shown signs of severe depression, she often talks about that she would rather be dead than alive anymore. After all of the pain, all of the humiliation of not being able to walk well, the embarrassment of not being able to write well, all of the staring and comments I would hear about my mother, she is still strong. After 6 years of pain and suffering along the way, I do not blame her. Everything seems to get worse. She now needs surgery due to avascular necrosis that was caused by many years of chemotherapy. I began to lose motivation slowly because I did not have any friends in any of my classes and I felt like I was stuck in a

Eight years ago, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was receiving chemotherapy not too long before he passed away. When he got admitted into the hospital for the last time, my family and I took turn to be with him throughout the day. I remember the kind nurses that genuinely took care of us for the time that we stayed. They made sure we had a comfortable place to sleep and that we fed ourselves even though we had no appetite to eat at the moment. Until my dad's last breath, they were there to comfort and shared prayers with us. It was comforting to know that the nurses were there for us because my family and I had no one else besides each other since none of our relatives live in the States.

My parents told me that I was going to start chemotherapy and that I had to have surgery to put my port in. They said that I would have to stay in the hospital for a while and that I would feel really sick. On december 16,2007 I checked into Children’s hospital in Boston. I figured out what cancer was a couple of months later. I was not a big fan of shots but they gave several of them daily. The worst thing about being in a hospital is that there is nothing you can do to improve your situation. I got used to taking pills because they would give me multiple every day. The worst part about cancer was the fact that I lost my hair.During my beginning phases of Cancer I was told to miss school. I ended up missing 5 months of school while in the first grade. The principle wanted to hold me back a year but my teacher said that I was so advanced that I was able to move to the seond grade anyway.In November of 2008 the Make A Wish foundation granted me my wish of going to Disney World. I had never been outside of Massachusetts so going to Florida as a big deal for me. I had also never been on a plane and people say that your ears start to hurt so I was pretty

My dad got diagnosed with prostate cancer in early 2014. It was a hard year for my family, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. Not even in my worst dreams did I ever see my dad having cancer. The man that I looked up to, and loved to pieces had cancer. I was devastated, I remember crying and being afraid that I was going to lose him to an incurable disease that lurked the lives of many.

What’s one word that changed my life forever? Cancer. I never thought I would learn so much from what has happened to me. I found out how much you can learn from cancer, how it effected me and all the people around me and I what learned from being in this situation. My dads name is Daniel Kooima, but most people call him Dan for short. He works at Lems Auto Recyclers, in Doon, Iowa, as the bookkeeper. He loves working out in our garage on wood projects, fixing his Camaro and keeping up with NASCAR and local sprint car racing.

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.

Cancer has been a big part of my life, and not in a very good way. I have lost several family members due to the dreadful disease. That includes my father, grandma, my uncle and now my mother has it as well. Numerous trips to doctors’ offices, hospitals and cancer doctor trips as well. I am never sure what the doctors will ever tell my mom when we arrive, it’s kind of like waiting for a nuclear bomb to go off. Cancer has thought me many things in life, that I had to learn very young! My father passed away when I was only four years old, and I lost my grandma the beginning of my eighth grade year. Life has been very difficult without these loved ones. Life never will or never has gone on without them, no matter what. I believe someone will find a cure for cancer, very soon!

Cancer… just hearing this word makes my stomach melt. It makes me sick. It gives me a bad feeling. Cancer has always been an illness that affected my family. Some were strong enough to survive… and unfortunately some others weren’t. Cancer affects approximately 39.6 percent of our population each year. From that about 7.6 million people die each year from this horrible disease according to the US Health organization. I’m sure many people can relate to my situation. All of us have known somebody who has had cancer and maybe was lucky enough to survive it. Or maybe didn’t make it and passed away, left many memories, many people behind. We have all heard about a story like this at least once, or maybe even lived it, who knows.

It was a bone chilling January night; my mom received a call at about 11:15 PM, a call that changed my life forever. My Aunt June was on the other line. She was crying so hard my mother could barely understand her. Through the sobbing my mom finally understood that Brian, my cousin, had been in a horrible accident and she didn’t know how bad it was. My mother jumped out of the bed after she hung up the phone. She screamed up the stairs at my sister and me; it was a nerve shrilling scream. I could hear fear in her voice. My mom was always yelling at us growing up if we forgot to do something. She would even get us out of bed to finish something that wasn’t done completely. This particular

June 11, 2015. It was a regular summer day, or so I thought. Only five days until my fifteenth birthday and I was super excited. My mom had taken the morning off from work to take my grandmother to the doctors. She was going for her regular heart check-up appointment. As we always did, my mother and I drove that morning over to the nursing home in St. Matthews, South Carolina. My mother had recently entered my grandmother into the nursing home because my mom needed to start working more and could not fulfill the obligations of taking care of my grandmother like she normally would. When we got to the nursing home, we parked the car under the awning which was in the front of the nursing and covered a little walkway where people loaded their family members. I got out first and headed back to the room as my mom followed closely behind. When I walked into the room, I saw my sweet loving grandmother sitting there. As always, my beautiful grandmother, with her white hair, her green eyes, her frail but beautiful skin, and her smile glistened as she awaited her day out. My grandmother did not get out much so even going to the doctors was a good day out for her. We helped her into her wheelchair, a normal struggle for my mother and I, and we rolled her down the hallway to the car. We loaded her into the car, another struggle, and we headed off to Orangeburg which was where the doctors office was. While riding to the doctor's office my grandmother mentioned that her hands looked green

It was May 17th, 2011, it was a normal school day when my brother and I were told that my mom called to say that she was picking us up early. I was anxious, wondering why we were going home early and breaking our usual routine. When my mom came to get us, the first thing that I noticed was that she didn’t greet us with her usual smile. I was 9 years old, very observant, but not able to sense what was to come. We got into the car, when I asked my mom where we were going hoping