My Father's Cancer

I remember waking up that day and that feeling in my stomach, knowing what was about to happen. Growing up I knew about my father's sickness. My family, I recall, was always supportive. No one ever thinks about how one day, everyone you’re around for years, can just vanish. I cherished my friends as I was growing up. I lived there for a majority of my life, up until fourth grade. I remember sitting at a neighbor's house and having the mother come into the room and inform me that I need to be home swiftly. As I ran home, my head was crowded with thoughts to the point where I could not even think about why I was supposed to be home quickly. That day marked the transition of what would be the biggest change in my life. As by dad became sicker,

When my dad came home that evening he sat me down and asked me if I knew what cancer was. I had an idea so I just nodded my head, he went on to tried to explain to me how bad the cancer was that my mom had been diagnosed with. Seeing my dad so afraid scared me. The fear I felt then led me to realize that I needed to try and hide it because it would only hurt my dad more to see his children so upset. I did my best to help, I tucked my little sisters into bed while my mom was away at the hospital, read them stories and did the best I could at preparing snacks to comfort them. After my mom arrived home and she recovered from the surgery she started chemotherapy. The miserable treatment that attacks the cancer also makes her very ill. Every other week she was sick. Before every bad week I wanted to cry, but that wouldn’t help anyone. Lane and Kenna already were crying, if I cried it could only hurt my parents

On May 11th 2013, my grandma passed away due to pancreatic cancer. A little later that year on September 25th, my mom received a call from my aunt in Guam that my dad had passed away in his sleep. Then on May 14th 2014, my grandpa passed from complications of an allergic reaction to a medication. So within a year, I was left to deal with three immediate family deaths, one right after another. Losing such important figures in one’s life could leave someone depressed and unmotivated to move on with their own life and to rise above those challenges is difficult, yet possible. During this time of hardship, I grew discouraged and saddened, but over time I became motivated to set aside these struggles and make a change.

Early October 2016 to January 2017, was the hardest time ever in my life. In October we found out that my Grandpa had a very aggressive form of stage four brain cancer. We knew that there was something wrong but we never thought it would be that bad. For the next month, the doctors ran tests, decided on a game plan, and gave results. My grandpa was in severe pain and confusions. We got the results that he would need to go through surgery on his brain to remove the tumor. This was around November 15. That was probably the scariest day of my life. His surgery and I will never forget, was at 12:10 pm. I remember sitting at the kitchen counter and I just prayed for half an hour. After that, I remember going on my computer and searching on Google

There’s a long journey through cancer, it becomes an ever ending battle that some win or lose. Once you become a survivor even though it becomes a victory it still in the back of a person’s mind if they will stay in remission or if it will come back. Their immune system will always be a bit weaker even after being in remission. Two different people can get the same cancer and the results can be totally different.

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

At a young age, having all four of my grandparents die was crushing. One in front of me, two by suicide and one to cancer. In the second grade when my dad went to rehab, not only eroding our relationship, but also tearing apart my family. As a result, during my third grade year, sleep was rare due to the echoing fighting that I would hear in the adjacent room. Meanwhile this lack of sleep only made school worse. Being called a “retard” because dyslexia made it a pain in the ass to read. This fearful environment slowly began to embed anxiety into my young self. Now that my family was begging to get tired of my hometown in Arizona, we packed our bags and moved to San Diego. In 6th grade is where I got into my first fist fight in the middle school locker room, where Mr. Beckley had to break us apart. Only giving me the “new kid” a bad reputation to some, but respect to others. The ones who began to give me respect, would only bring me down further than I already was. On to my later years in middle school where I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Witch felt like a constant rain cloud over me at all times, where the weight of my bed sheets was too much to handle. Therefor causing more chaos in my family. This would give myself an almost constant knot in my throat ready to break down and cry at any part of the day. But like any story, there's light at the end of the tunnel. No matter how long it seems or how dark it gets, there is... Going into my freshman things

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

16 years old. That’s how old I was when my whole life changed. Not only did I lose a man that raised me and taught me to be the best version of myself, but I was also diagnosed with Wegener’s Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis. The beginning of my junior year was, to put it lightly, hectic. The first day I missed went by, my head pounding as I sat in a hospital room. My grandfather laid in the hospital bed and I caught word of the diagnosis. Stage Four Pancreatic Cancer. That word, “cancer”, spoke volumes within my buzzing mind. I laid my head on my Papa’s bed next to him and began to cry, keeping my face hidden because I didn’t want him to see me cry. He ran his fingers through my hair and sang a song I’d heard my whole life, “You Are My Sunshine”;

It all started with our family sitting at the dinner table with my mom crying, holding crumpled up tissues with black streaks of mascara on it. My dad nervous enough to say, “Your mom has stage four breast cancer.” Those words have stuck in my head clear as a bell for the last eight years. Our faces of curiosity soon turned into fear. As an eight year old I didn’t understand a lot of words grownups said, but those burning words were sharp knifes on my throat.

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.

This time I knew enough to be afraid. Over the course of the next week, I spent the time I was supposed to use to study for my final exams researching the condition, wishing to find any evidence that my father’s prognosis was not as bad as I thought it was. The treatment my father’s doctors recommended involved months of chemotherapy and full body radiation to kill all the malignant cells in his blood. The treatment would also kill my father’s immune system leaving him severely immunocompromised. Once all the cancer was gone my father would need a stem cell transplant to allow him to develop a new immune system.

One experience that truly shaped the person that I am today is my Father’s on going battle with cancer. Over the course of 3 months the tumor had grown from the size of a dime to the size of a small orange in his neck. My Father had then gotten surgery to remove the stage 4 cancerous tumor. After finding out the cancer spread to the other side of his neck, he underwent another surgery. This has all taken place from June through September 2017. He is currently recovering from the second surgery and preparing for Chemotherapy. The situation in which I was forced into has had many positive impacts on me as a person and continues to as it progresses. After being forced into the situation I have changed very much as a person and a student. Having

One of the most common ways of treating cancer is through radiation, and yet that’s how come cancer is caused. Another form of treatment is to have surgery to remove it. Some more forms of treatment would be chemotherapy, and immunotherapy (all from cancer.gov). Above is a chart that also shows the percentage of the different types of cancer. Chemotherapy works by, “...a drug treatment that uses powerful chemicals to kill fast-growing cells in your body.” From mayoclinic.org. Now, there are side effects of chemotherapy. Some of them include, “…nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, loss of appetite, fatigue, fever, mouth sores, pain, constipation, and easy bruising.” All are short term issues while these are long term, “…Damage to lung, heart problems, infertility, kidney problems, and nerve damage.” From Mayoclinic.org. The reason chemotherapy causes so many side effects is because it’s extremely harsh on your body. There are drugs in your body and cells are being killed and your body is not familiar with this happening. Radiation is another harsh form of treatment for cancer on your body. Radiation therapy, “…uses beams of intense energy to kill cancer cells.” From Mayoclinic.org. Radiation works because the energy that is used is targeted and regulated radiation that kills cancer cells without causing more cancer to appear or kill healthy

When I found out about my dad’s cancer, I was confused as to what that meant. My parents explained that dad would be very sick but he would hopefully get better. They always tried to