Personal Narrative: My Personal Experiences Of Breast Cancer

An experience in my life that helped shaped me to be the person I am today is my mom going through breast cancer. This was the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer my 10th grade year of high school. This was the hardest year of my life. My mom was and still is my best friend and I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for her. She helps me from everything from school to problems with my friends. She always gives me the best advice in any situation, so seeing her go through this really hard and impact on me and especially during sophomore year. My mom had to get a double mastectomy and tran flap( transverse rectus abdominis). So this meant my mom lived in a chair in our living room for a month. This was very hard to see.

I feel truly blessed to have a second chance in life. My life changed drastically when diagnosed with stage 2 cancer. Not only was my life impacted, my family member’s lives were affected too. Cancer is a serious illness that takes a very strong person to overcome. Being a survivor is a huge accomplishment in life. Any person that builds a strong enough immune system to surpass the array of illness produce from the sickness is looked upon as a hero. A cancer survivor is a unique individual. Cancer is a very powerful and harmful disease that affects human being on a daily basis.

“Sarah has cancer,” is a phrase that changed my life. I was barely ten years old when my dad picked me up from volleyball practice to explain why my little sister had been in the hospital so much. At the time, Sarah was eight and had been in and out of hospitals and various doctor’s appointments over the past two months to try and figure out what was going on. Learning she had cancer was both a relief and burden. The feeling of relief occurred because now we finally knew what was wrong, but it was a burden because you hear about cancer in the elderly, not in eight year-old girls that love sports.

When I was a sophomore my mother was diagnosed with cancer and as a result, I have spent most of my college career dealing emotional with the result. She is free of disease as of right now but it was a long and tumultuous journey to get there. I practically spent 2 years without a mother because she was so sick and I had to take her role. I organized family events, cooked them meals when I could, did their shopping all while going to school three hours away and having constant fear that my mother and the love of my life was going to die. That is only my personal struggle with it, not even taking into account her trauma or my fathers or brothers. It almost seems selfish to reflect on this because it was nothing compared to what she was going through. I went through stages where I was horrified and so scared and then I was angry and selfish. I wanted my mother back, I wanted her to make me dinner when I came home from college and send me care packages again. I wanted her to go shopping every weekend like she used to and spend money on things that weren’t hospital bills. I wanted to call her and hear something other than how she couldn’t get chemotherapy that week because she was so weak and was rushed to the hospital for a blood transfusion. I was tired of talking to people about it and people asking if I was okay. I felt like a broken record, “Yes, I’m okay. Yes, school is

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

During my sophomore year, I became depressed and antisocial due to problems in my life. My mother has been sick with a brain tumor since 2009 and she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2012. It has been very hard on me and especially for my mother. I worry about her because she has shown signs of severe depression, she often talks about that she would rather be dead than alive anymore. After all of the pain, all of the humiliation of not being able to walk well, the embarrassment of not being able to write well, all of the staring and comments I would hear about my mother, she is still strong. After 6 years of pain and suffering along the way, I do not blame her. Everything seems to get worse. She now needs surgery due to avascular necrosis that was caused by many years of chemotherapy. I began to lose motivation slowly because I did not have any friends in any of my classes and I felt like I was stuck in a

Im so shy to ask for help - but I’m writing to help fund my mom’s recovery of stage 4 breast cancer. She was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer and is now on a long road of battling.

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.

As we walked through what seemed like the never ending series of hallways, lit only by the fluorescent lights lining the ceiling. Asking each staff member we could find if we were going the right way and to the right room.

At fifteen, all I cared about was hanging out with my friends after school, practicing softball, and admiring boys. Like most high school students, the most exceedingly awful piece of my day was school and homework. That was all spot-on until the day I found out my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. My world came slamming down around me. Facing a disease, particularly an incurable one, leads to an emotional experience that is potentially life changing.

Almost 2 years ago, I was a new nurse in the Huntington Hospital Cancer Center. I still remember the time when I first started working there, I was very nervous because oncology was new to me. I did not know what to expect. Thankfully, I could adapt quickly into the team due to some past clinical experiences. I realized that it might be difficult at times to work with all the staff. I had learned to know both what they do with the patient and what their opinions are. I do think that nurses are like the hub of a wheel with all of the other health professionals branching out from it.

Throughout the entirety of my life, I have faced multiple obstacles that have helped shape me and prepared me to succeed. However, out of all of the obstacles that I have hurdled one stands out to me. My mother’s diagnosis of cancer and death is an obstacle that I am still trying to conquer. I was a sophomore when my mom was diagnosed with colon and pancreas cancer, at this point of my life I had a 4.0 for the school year. Her strength and resilience to beat her cancer, gave me the extra bit of strength to finish out the school year. I missed school in order to accompany her to her chemotherapy, and did my homework that I received in order to stay caught up in my classes. My mother was my biggest supporter and best friend, she was always at my theater productions, basketball games, and

Anything can happen at any given time. I was determined to know how to care for my family members as well as learn more about the disease itself. So I persuaded school for practical nursing, within this year I had committed to I went through a series of unfortunate events. The first semester I lost a friend to Diabetes Mellitus. She fell into diabetic coma and did not make it out. The second semester yet again I lost another dear friend, this time was suicide. Third and final semester I was already a wreck with what I already was going through then right before my last clinical check off I got hit with bad news. My aunt Terry on my father’s side of the family had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite all the negative events happening in my life I managed to graduate with a 3.5GPA, earned my practical nurse diploma and passed my exam from state boards of nursing.

Cancer can take a family and turn it upside down in a matter of minutes. Cancer affects someone's mind, body, emotions, and thoughts. Cancer can take a family and tear them apart, but in some cases it can find a way to teach you a lesson and this is what it did for me. After years of trying to figure out what I did to deserve losing my mother I finally came up with an explanation for myself and it stands as follows: A person can only work to build another's walls up so high. They can teach you that there's always going to be mountains that you have to try to get over, but as long as you try your hardest you'll be climbing down the other side soon enough. After so many mountains there comes a time when your help is best used somewhere where no pain is felt. Your story needs a closing so that others can learn off of what you've done. Even if so many other people don't want this moment to ever happen it's bound

Fast forward a couple years to 2013, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was not and still is not an easy thing to have to deal with. This lady who was always this strong person who wouldn’t take crap from anyone has now been beaten down too sick to get out of bed. Our roles have switched now I take care of her, I lie with her for countless hours making sure she is okay just as she did when I was a kid. My mom comes to me for security and reassurance now, I have to be there for her and stay strong. I had to learn to talk to her without crying every time I looked at her. When you were a child your parent crying was one of the scariest things so I have had to do the same for her. This has ultimately pushed me to young adult hood. I had to deal with this huge emotional disaster and the woman who I usually run to for advice was the center of the