Personal Narrative: Liver Sarcoma

It’s astonishing how one diagnosis can completely alter the life of a family. One day you’re looking to move into the fancy houses along the coast, and the next you’re forced to consider if you would be able to afford the same home with one income. When I was three years old my mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer. I was too young to know what was happening, but at the age of seven, when my mom was diagnosed for the second time, I began to notice a change in my family’s daily life. I was told not to sit on my mom’s lap and that she could not play with me as much as usual due to her Chemotherapy, but it was not until her third time contracting cancer that I noticed the pain she was in. I was fourteen when I finally learned about the very thing I had been trying to figure out for nearly my entire life. This burden has solely shaped the way I act and how I handle life’s many challenges, but how it accomplished this was not always a joyous experience.

Everyone hears the word “Cancer” and automatically thinks death? Imagine being told you have cancer a month before Christmas and having to start chemotherapy right away. That was me at age 16 barely a junior in High School, they say high school is supposed to be a great experience. And it was at the beginning which was my freshman and sophomore year. I was that girl athlete with lots of friends who went day by day not caring about my health I would eat lots of junk food and stay up late at night. I come from a Hispanic family single parent my mom and 4 siblings 3 girls and one boy. Two had already gotten married and there was only 3 left at home including me. My mom would work out in the fields so sometimes she 'd come home late, therefore

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

The fall of 2014 was the absolute worst few months of my life. It started in the middle of September. My dad suddenly one day had a sharp pain in his side. He said he was fine, but my mom was not having that and got him to go to the hospital. The pain passed but that week they set up all kinds of scans to find out what was wrong. They figured out the pain was just gallstones. They thought they could just remove it, but that did not happen. In the same scan they found a mass in his chest. The doctors did not know what it was, so they came up with a few possibilities. A few weeks later, in the middle of October, they scheduled a surgical biopsy. Dr. Wallace, the surgeon, told us there were a few different outcomes from the surgery. I do not remember it all exactly, but I know there was one bad outcome and three others that were curable and they could fix right then and there. If it was one of the three things they could do a whole nother operation right there that day and remove it. The fourth was cancer.

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

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.

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

Each year, approximately 12.7 million people are diagnosed with cancer and unfortunately that number is not decreasing. My sister, Caitlin, was a part of that statistic 12 years ago, and to say her Ewing’s Sarcoma changed not only her life, but also my family’s would be an understatement. As a child, witnessing the deterioration of my sister’s health and the my family’s normalcy ultimately shaped me into the person I am today; a person that welcomes change with a resilient nature built on a foundation to never quit. I am blessed to say that my sister is flourishing and her cancer has been in remission and upon meeting her today, one would have no idea she ever endured such a relentless disease. Nevertheless in the past two years, my mother

No one thinks that it will happen to them. No one thinks that one day it might be them walking into the doctor’s office, only to hear those three horrifying words – “You have cancer.” To say that cancer changed my life is an enormous understatement. Cancer took me on an insane roller coaster for two years.. turning, twisting, jerking. I never thought it would happen to me. I heard those three lethal words, but they were not spoken to me. My father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December of 2014.

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.

You never know how essential a person is to you until they are no longer in your life. 7.6 million pure lives are lost every year due to this distressing disease. The volleyball team of Ontario High School was fortunate enough to promote awareness for various types of cancers. Our creative way to get the school and community involved is hosting a volley for a cure match and auctioning prizes off and having a bake sale. This hits home with me because my papa battled this life threatening disease for over thirty years. Thousands of dollars are raised in creative ways and donated in optimism to finding a cure to kick cancer's butt.

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.

It all started when my aunt found out she had Breast Cancer, no one in my family had ever had an illness like that before and it was going to change my Aunts' life forever. She did not want anyone-especially her two boys to know about what happened because she was worried people would treat her differently. When I found out I could not believe what I was hearing, I never thought anyone in my family would ever get an illness such as this one because it was not hereditary. I always thought Breast Cancer was something that random people got, I never knew anyone who had it before and when I thought of Breast Cancer the first thing that usually came in my head was the Susan G. Komen fundraising walks, so I did not know much about it.

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.

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.