Personal Narrative: My Experience With Colon Cancer

I fight for my health every day in ways most people do not understand I lay in bed struggling just to get up in the morning only to get faced with a new day of troubles. All I think about is the day that being a normal eighteen year old ended for me. I was responsible went to work every day, and was trying to figure out my first year of college until everything was flipped upside down.

“We can’t go out tonight. I already told you that.” Cali told her best friend Caleb now very annoyed.

As an eight-year-old in the fourth grade, I had yet to develop an understanding of the world. I believed every family had two parents. I believed all children lived in houses and attended school. And I believed a variety of other utopian and idealistic situations to be reality. Media, adults, and other influences lead me to believe that the only thing I had to worry about were my birthday gifts. This false pretense was clearly contradicted when I was presented with the news that my father had cancer. It was a weekend in the fall, and I was playing with various toys and games. My mother shouted down to the basement that we were having a family meeting. Although this did not inspire me, I eventually stumbled up the steps and staggered into the living room. In the room, I joined my brother, sister, and parents. As a took a seat, I readied myself for the

There is no mincing of words, nor is there a phrase with gentle connotations to adequately articulate the emotional, psychological or physical place that cancer forces upon you. Quite frankly, battling cancer sucks. The individual engaged in the battle and their support system can choose to crumble or rally. To crumble is to become angry and resentful. To rally is to rise up and use your experiences to help others. I was fortunate that my support group didn’t give me an option to crumble. I was raised in a family, in a church community that focuses on service. So, at 14 battling cancer, I was told that the only way out was through and to get through the turmoil of cancer, I was expected to find a “cancer” mentor and find a way to give back.

Unexpectedly, my father called and with an unsteady voice explained, “I had to take your mother to the emergency room, and she is now being admitted to the hospital.” At age 13, this phone call began the most dreadful time of my life. Prior to this event, I was exceedingly dependent on my parents and even struggled with separating from them. In the beginning of my mother’s hospital stay, my familymy parents and two, younger sisters were constantly divided. My father stayed in the hospital with my mother, while my sisters and I would switch between caring family members and friends. Eventually I grew tired of different environments and decided that staying home alone was the far better option. As a result, I appreciate independence and know how to solely maintain a home.

Five years ago in 2012 my Aunt Mary died from cancer. Cancer had consumed her whole body. It started in her liver and spread to different organs and even reached her brain. When she found out she had cancer she was told she only had a few months to live. I had just seen her on a trip we had before we found out she had cancer and that was the last time I saw her.

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”;

Despite my parent's divorce, I led a contented life. My dad lived in the outskirts of Denver, but his distance never kept him from maintaining an active role in my life. Back in Colorado Springs, I lived with my mom, little sister, and step-father. Growing up, I never felt that I truly fit in with any of my friends or even my family; like almost any other teenager, I felt awkward in my own skin. However, my focus quickly shifted away from myself. In November of 2013, my mother learned that she had Pancreatic Cancer. My bubble of protection from the world's problems promptly burst as I heard the diagnosis. My family did our research only to discover that the statistics were horrifying. The five-year survival rate for someone with any stage

Have you ever feel like luck is not by your side.? That’s how I felt for many years. The environment in which I was raised shaped me into a resilient person and I’m thankful for that because I survived both cancer and my parents’ divorce.

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.

A woolen blanket. A thick one, so thick that if you climbed under it, it would be hard to breathe. Now it is wet, a lingering dampness that won't go away no matter how much you want it to. The dampness leads to a chill, and the chill works into your bones. You would be so much warmer without the blanket, but it's too heavy to throw off. That is depression. When I was six years old, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. I lived every day with tears in my eyes as my mother lived in pain and could not bring herself to eat or drink. I longed for her suffering to subside and for her to rebuild her strength and act like her joyful self again. However, that never happened. On March 9th, 2009, she lost her battle with cancer. After she died, I

This week I was at the Cancer center. On Monday, I followed one of the social workers and she gave me a lot of information about the type of work they do. She gave me a tour around the cancer center where I got to see where the patients go to get their radiation and chemotherapy. We did not get to see any patients today and that was unfortunate because I was excited to see exactly the type of interaction social workers have with the cancer patients. Monday was difficult for me because I would remember about my car being stolen. I had to use a lot of coping skills to prevent me from crying during the day. Being at my internship on Monday was, nonetheless, helpful as it distracted me from my problem. Fortunately, I was called on Monday night

Everybody in my family was heart broken especially my dad. The news was so sudden because I left school early and I didn’t understand why I left. Once I got home, I saw my dad crying on the sofa in the living room. I knew something bad has happened. As in bad because I have never seen my dad like that before he sees himself as such a powerful man that he seems so vulnerable. Weeks after my uncle's funeral there was, of course, another argument. I saw myself as a kid who was torn and split to be shared between a family that was close to disaster. It was hard, I used to blame myself for everything to see if I was able to resolve the

Over that agonizing February, while my family stayed by my grandfather’s side, I remained home trying to succeed in school. I was intentionally left out of the conversation to protect my emotions. However, being shielded from the situation only lead to pain because I was left with nothing but assumptions and fears. I later discovered that my grandfather nearly died during his time in the hospital. He was on the verge of death, and I was left in the dark. That sense of dread while I was alone accounted for a significant amount of my

On March 7, 2005, unexpectedly, my father passed away for an unknown reason. As a result, I took my father’s death to the heart and I believed that it was my fault somehow, and with that said, my life completely ended. Be that as it may, I struggled with my father’s untimely death for many years not knowing what to do with myself, and at this point in time, I just wanted to give up. My life after my father’s death was filled with anger, loneliness, and sadness, and the thought of myself having a life that was meant to be something other than what I was going through was just a vivid imagination. Life after my father’s death felt like I was being punished for not living up to what a daughter was supposed to be. Although I fell into a deep and dark life, which I regret to this day because I was afraid to deal with the death of my father, I tried to stay positive; however, it was exasperating. I would avoid situations that had some resemblance of my father, like birthdays and holidays. So many years have gone by and I couldn’t even look at photos of my father because I didn’t want to feel the pain that I knew I would feel. Above all my, life was destroyed when my father passed away, and I knew that if I didn’t deal with his passing, I might