Personal Narrative: Jaliyah's Illness

The call was from the hospital. We suspected something horrible had happened. I started crying right there. My mom turned the car around and sped back to Good Samaritan hospital. At around 1:15 my mom and I rushed into the hospital and ran back onto the floor that he was on. My mom got there first, she stopped in the doorway and that’s when I knew something was wrong. I started to sob harder. I fell to the floor sobbing into my hands. When I heard my Grandma cry out in anguish, I knew it was all over for my Grandpa. I

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

When I turned 11-years-old my whole childhood began to change my life went from being perfect to everything but perfect. One day I came home to hear the news my father, my best friend; my hero was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. Not knowing the struggle my family was about to take on I just began to cry. I had a million things running through my head what’s going to happen? Will everything be okay? Why him? What is going to happen? With all these things rushing through my head all I could do was cry not knowing this was least worse to come.

The parents came out of Grandma’s room by one by one, bags under their eyes, makeup running down their face, and bright red noses. By that time, I could almost predict what happened. As my mom and dad approached us with their heads down, I prepared myself to hear exactly what I never wanted to hear. “The doctors are turning off the life support machine. She isn’t suffering anymore, and she will be looking over every one of you guys. She said she loves you all so much,” Mom told us while my dad didn’t hide his tears back.

Taylor Has been through a lot her grandfather died and so did her uncle, he died at the age of 29. She never had the chance to say how much she loved them. She always thought “What if I had said something, anything, What if I had the chance to change his outcome but I didn’t, I did nothing I just let it happen.” Now she is afraid of losing her grandmother that would be the end of the 4th of July parties, the christmas get-togethers, the Easter parties, and swimming in her lake when it's burning hot in the summer. But what breaks her heart the most is that her father has cancer. Taylor’s father mean the world to her, He means everything.

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.

His friend said he had nothing to worry about, most likely it was just a fatty tumor. As days went on he grew more and more exhausted and was not acting himself. After deciding to look into another doctor he found out the news, terminal stage 4 lung cancer had filled his whole chest cavity. The doctors seemed urgent and wanted to get a biopsy to look into the tumor more closely. He was rushed to the Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne and they told him immediately that the outcome was not going to be a positive one. With that news the whole family was crushed. Questions began to fill all of our heads. “How did this happen?” “What could I have done to prevent this?” These were all questions that we had, but couldn’t be

“I know how hard it is to lose someone,” said Mrs. Navaz, my boss, as I asked for a day off of work. This was just recently when my grandfather had two strokes within a period of two weeks. When she first told me this, I was frozen; I didn’t know how to respond. I gratefully thought back to all the experiences I shared with my grandfather growing up and how he shaped me into the person I am today.

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.

I will never forget my last day in the hospital after being diagnosed. Finally after nearly a month of bad food and sharing a room with a four year old having just been diagnosed with cancer they were finally letting me leave. I almost felt out of place returning back to my home Pulling up on my driveway I felt scared; I knew my life had changed forever. I distinctly remember clutching at my wrist, the wrist where my hospital identification bracelet was as if I was missing something. I tried holding back my tears; however, the more I tried the more futile it seemed. I kept replaying the doctor’s voice in my head, the voice I overheard from the hall when I was supposed to be sleeping. “Your son is very sick. His life is about to change forever and it will take time for him to adjust “ the doctor said to my mom. Thinking back to this, I can only dream of discovering Emerson then; how much better these last few years would have been if I had. I could

I frantically run across the street to ask the neighbor to look after my two sons who have just returned from school. Then jump in my car and speed to the hospital. Not sure what to expect when I get there, I brace for the worst as I walk in the room. The room is filled with doctors and nurses all working to stabilize him before the trip “You’ll only have two minutes” I’m told as nurse hurries past me. “The helicopter is here, we’re taking him up now.” I love you was all I had the chance to utter before they rolled the gurney carrying his battered body away. “Where is he being taken” I ask a nurse as I’m running out the door. “Saint Vincent’s in Toledo” she responds

"Don't worry, Tori," my dad tried to tell me before he died, but twelve-year-old me wasn't listening. I was too scared, because if my dad said those words, it meant they were going to be his final ones. "Victoria, look at me. Please, Tori, just look." I had never before heard his voice like this. He was pleading with me, his voice sounding so broken. "When I go wherever I'm going, I don't want to go there knowing that you're lost. I want you to know that you need to keep being my happy little girl." My hands were clamped over my ears, but I could still hear him quietly sobbing.

As I stood watching the moms work on her and trying to get ahold of her mom, I began tearing up and was thinking of the worst things possible. What if her heart is failing again? What if she doesn’t get any better? What if I lose one of my best friends? What if? Looking at her crying and scared to death because her mom was two hours away, I said a little

It all started in …… when the chemo stopped working and when surgeries were a normal thing for Grandma Botbyl. Being a thirteen year old and getting told that your grandma has cancer again for the second time was a rough start my seventh grade year. Being diagnosed and then misdiagnosed with cancer was something I couldn’t trust anymore, and I couldn’t trust the doctors at this point. Moving from doctor to doctor, trying to find an answer to all of these problems that are being caused was hard. Cancer is moving from place to place, left and right, until …. came around. Growing up with both of my grandmas struggling and dealing with cancer, I got an idea of how the long journey would go. After the latest surgery to remove all the cancer from Grandma Botbyl, I got to witness the loving family in the crowded hospital room all together feeling God’s presence able to call Grandma Botbyl ‘cancer free.’

I know I shouldn’t be eavesdropping. I don’t know what emotions to have about this. Last summer, my family found out that my poppop was diagnosed with stage 4 Cancer. The Cancer spread to his whole body. He got a few shots and the doctors said he was getting worse. He started to make a list of everywhere he wanted to go before he died. He wanted to visit Alaska, Canada, Washington D.C, and to the annual family camping trip to Frontier Town. As the weeks and months went on, the doctors said he was getting better until one day he showed up at the hospital. He told them the story of what had happened, “I was just walking around my house and I laid down on the couch, when I tried to stand up my legs gave out and I fell to the ground. No one was home so I couldn’t call for help.” The doctors were upset to hear that his legs were already giving out. They told him that he had to stay in the hospital for a little while and they put him on medication. The medication was helping him and the doctors thought that he was getting better, but they said that he should not be walking around anymore. The doctors said that if he wanted to get somewhere he has to move around by someone pushing him in a wheelchair. He visited Washington D.C and he said he had so much fun and that he was really glad he got to go there before he died.