Narrative Essay On Non Hodgkins Lymphoma

March 15th, 2010, was a completely normal day. As normal as any day is for a twelve year old homeschooler. I was home with my oldest sister Brittany who was twenty at the time and I was just finishing up my homework for the day. After finishing up my math work I went to go watch television in the living room. Brittany was in her room and my parents didn't get home until later because of work. A few hours into my movie, my stomach started to hurt. Since I was twelve I didn't no the differences of pain so I just left it alone for a while. Later in the day my abdomen was aching so much I couldn't even get off the couch. After wailing for Brittany to call Mom I was sent to the emergency room in an ambulance with severe abdomen pain. After several hours in the ER and multiple tests, doctors found nothing. I was sent home and was told to take Tylenol for the pain. Once I got home, it didn't hurt anymore so I thought they were right and that I could just go on with my crazy life as a twelve year old. I was wrong. Two months after, I got the same

Continually, my father would come home from work weaker and disable sometimes he could barely stand up. He started getting blurry purple spots on him and that's when I figured something wasn't the same about my father. He used to always carry himself with energy and laughter but, now he couldn’t get out of bed. We took him to the hospital and they told us he had stage 2 cancer. This experience has not only changed me as a person but changed the way I had to live for a while. When my father had to be on around the clock care at the hospital me and my older sister had to help out around the house. While most 4th graders were outside playing with their friends, I was inside everyday helping my mom cook, clean, and feed the dogs. I had to step up a lot and do more thing that i'm not used to because my dad wasn't around to help us out. We would go up to the hospital about every other night and stay up there and spend the night watching over my dad at night. My dad’s cancer taught me that life is too short to be wasting my time on the little things that aren't even important! I’ve realized l I need to make every minute and every moment

was exciting our family began to have some challenges. We moved to Wisconsin for a job offer my dad got. Things began to look up for me. I was in an established home, with a family that wanted me, and my father had a stable job. What could go wrong? But cold weather was difficult for my mother. The doctors informed her that she needed both of her knees replaced because of the freezing weather. After the operation, she was unable to take care of herself for the next year. Then my dad went to get a health check himself to make sure he was healthy. The worst possible news came back, he had prostate cancer. Devastated by the news, our family began to pray. But since my dad’s job offered insurance, he was able to undergo surgery. After a year of treatment, my dad became cancer free. Our time in Green Bay, Wisconsin ended up being difficult but also a

Leukemia is “a malignant progressive disease in which the bone marrow and other blood-forming organs produce increased numbers of immature or abnormal leukocytes. These suppress the production of normal blood cells, leading to anemia and other symptoms.”An estimated combined total of 162,020 people in the U.S. are expected to be diagnosed with leukemia, 60,192 people die, 14% live in remission and my father is just another statistic. When I was nine years old, my father was diagnosed with Leukemia, an illness that at the time I did not understand. This left my mother raising two kids and working two jobs to make ends meet. Throughout this time of never ending hospital visits, I experienced the kindness and care provided to us by my father’s doctors - something that until this day I will never forget.

Twelve hospital stays, nine surgeries, and fourteen years later, you would think this patient and his family would have had enough hospital stays for a lifetime. He grew up with type I diabetes, which later put stress on his kidneys causing them to fail. He desperately needed a kidney transplant. The patient is my dad and I was just the little girl in the hospital room watching it all.

This time, my mother pulled me aside to tell me she too had developed cancer. However, this time was different. With all the new information on cancer, they had the ability to find my mother’s tumor before it progressed to a dangerous proportion like my grandmother’s tumor had. Diagnosed as stage 0, my mother’s treatment was straightforward, and I was not worried at all because I knew her cancer was treatable. This feeling of security I experienced was due to the research conducted by the thousands of scientists trying to discover a cure. My gratitude is owed to them.

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.

This past summer, I, along with my mother and father, travelled to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. My mom had been invited to participate in the St. Jude For Life Study because when she was around six to eight years old, she had a form of leukemia called Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. This particular study is to help all present and future St. Jude patients and help to research for a cure. While there, I saw first-hand how cancer can affect a family. You can just see all of the stress, the worry, the exhaustion, the tiredness, the fear, and the tears on the families’ and the patients’ faces.

Everyone has a background story. The struggles and lessons everyone has gone through, that has shaped them into the person that they are today. We all have different backgrounds. We're all different. Making everyone's background in its own little way, quite unique. Now I’m going to talk about one person’s story. That one person of course, is me. Now let me tell you the story of my unique background, I am not only about to tell you what almost everyone else would say, but also a bit of more insight in my personal life. Let’s get this story on the road.

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.

As I entered our home, J.P. was on the phone with his family. His tearfully conversation told me he had terminal cancer. Under this circumstance J.P. was uncertain of the type of cancer diagnosed. Attending a follow up appointment we were informed he had staged 4 terminal Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer. I cried with him for a short time. Knowing that our son Jason would be home soon from high school. We pulled ourselves together to give Jason the diagnosis. Our faith journey towards healing began that evening.

One day my dad came home from work. He looked really upset and didn’t seem like himself. Him and my mom told my brother, sister and I to come to the kitchen because they had bad news. “Kids, your great grandpa was diagnosed with lung cancer yesterday.” My mom told us with watery eyes. “Yeah,” My dad started, “We just found out this morning.” This was very upsetting and depressing news for my family and I to hear, but we all got through it together. We did this by going to see him as much as we could, even thought he lived three hours away from

In 2012 my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, for the following year and a half I watched my mother undergo multiple surgeries, daily radiation, and a variety of other intensive treatments. Throughout the entire process I watched my mother physically and mentally deteriorate. At the time my knowledge of the disease was minimal and not only was I fearful of my mothers future, but I was also unaware of the physiological functions that would overcome my mothers body eternally. Following a year and a half of agonizing and aggressive treatments my family received the news that my mother was officially in complete remission. Throughout my mothers battle with breast cancer my family and I met countless individuals who were

Early 2016, my dad became very ill and it wasn't going away. He realized that going to the emergency room was his only option. My mom took him to the emergency room, and they transferred him to the Lovelace cancer center. They explained to him that he had stage 4 colon cancer and there was nothing more they could do. The doctor who told him the news told him that he would have 6 months to live after his colonoscopy had taken place. It had been more than 6

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.