Everything is perfectly fine, everything is great, then one day it all comes crashing down and shattered pieces are left. My life would never be the same but I guess change is for the best and it forced me to become the person I am today. It’s rough to be the oldest child, especially when your mom is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and you have 3 younger sisters that look to you for comfort when their mom can’t be there. When the cancer is spread throughout your moms body doctors can’t just get rid of it no matter how badly you wish they could. Rounds of chemotherapy only slow it down, yet it’s still there a lurking monster waiting to reappear at any given moment. Nothing can even begin to describe the fear I felt, and still have to deal with today, but something happened where I could be there for others. What would Sheridan think, or what would 8 year old Lane think if they saw me cry? I had to be Strong not only for me, but for my other family members.
The nightmare began on a summer day when I was about to go into 5th grade. I was just a normal kid watching the television. I hear...
Isn’t it overwhelming to consider the fact that approximately one in eight deaths in the world are due to cancer? To make this more comprehensible, the number of deaths caused by cancer is greater than caused by AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Along with the idea that this disease does not have a definite cure is a mind-staggering concept to grasp. If not caught in time, cancer means guaranteed death. These types of thoughts were floating around my head when my mother had told me that my father had mouth cancer.
t was a sunny Friday morning when the news arrived. The perfect weather was an ironic slap to the face as we endured one of the worst days of our lives. A shrill ring from the phone grabbed the attention of all of us. The image of my mother’s face is burned into my memory forever. As she hung up the phone, I already knew the news was not what we had expected. She burst into tears as my father held her, tears falling from his own eyes. That day she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, a form of breast cancer. That day was her 50th birthday.
It was the biggest challenge she would have to face. Annika Lawrence was a typical 18 years old girl. She had long wavy chestnut hair, with bright blue eyes. She had many friends and a loving family with two dogs, Daisy and Hunter. She had just graduated from a local high school in her town. Her life was perfect, until she went for her physical and was diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctor’s advice to her was “Stop counting your life by years and start counting them by weeks”. After her visit with the doctor Annika felt that she been punched in her guts, and it hurts.
Seventeen years ago, I came bounding into a world of love and laughter. I was the first child, the first grandchild, the first niece, and the primary focus of my entire extended family. Although they were not married, my parents were young and energetic and had every good intention for their new baby girl. I grew up with opportunities for intellectual and spiritual growth, secure in the knowledge that I was loved, free from fear, and confident that my world was close to perfect. And I was the center of a world that had meaning only in terms of its effect on me-- what I could see from a height of three feet and what I could comprehend with the intellect and emotions of a child. This state of innocence persisted through my early teens, but changed dramatically in the spring of my sophomore year of high school. My beloved father was dying of AIDS.
Over the next few days, we took it easy. I went back to work. My mom was getting worse as each day went on with a few good days in between, of course. We ended up moving my niece Lexi’s birthday up a few days because we wanted to make sure my mom would be there for it. She, my mom, couldn’t talk as well anymore, but she made the effort to sing for her granddaughter. The day before my niece’s actual birthday, my mom passed away. Her wish had come true, too. She had wanted my dad to be the only one in the room when she went.
...t year, the worst happened. She was diagnosed with cancer, the same kind her mother had died from just a few years back. The bad news hit her like a ton of bricks. Ingo attempted to ease her pain by taking her out and doing all sorts of fun activities, but she found herself getting even more depressed and frustrated every time they went out. To her, it was just a reminder of the bad news and what was yet to come. Her condition began to worsen each and every day. It was unbearable for the family to watch, and as painful as it was to do, they began to avoid her. Anytime they tried to comfort her, she would only snap at them, even though she knew they were only trying to help and had her best interests at heart.
After the anxious wait the doctor finally came in. She turned away from the window into the white, barren room and noticed the look of sorrow and regret that filled the doctor’s face. In that one moment everything connected in her mind “I have cancer,” she thought to herself. All of a sudden millions of emotions flooded her teenage mind. She threw the test results in an act of rage and all the important papers flew to different ends of the room. She Desperately ran to the bathroom to try and escape from the feeling of betrayal in herself. Once she locked the door her worried mom began knocking on the door begging to let her daughter to let her in, but all she could think about was how her body have failed her and how she can’t go through this
I sat in my bed and questioned what purpose I held not only in my household, but also in the world around me. Being young and not understanding what you were put on the Earth to do is hard, and I really feel for my 8 year old self. At 8 you should be enjoying life without stress. An 8 year olds’ biggest worry should be whether they are going to play at the neighbor’s house or stay in and watch their favorite movie. Life didn’t come as easy to me, but this is also not to say that I was the only 8 year old struggling in the world. I knew that I shouldn’t have been feeling the way that I was, but at the same time I also didn’t know how to fix
My brother needed to be spoon fed every meal, clothed every day, and tucked in every night. Now my grandmother needed a helping hand too? The soldiers that I had bared arms with were lying on the ground before me. And I knew it was incumbent that we as a family carry or even drag them to sanctuary, even if I had to push my goals to the side for the time being. My mom and I did everything we could the past two years to help make our loved one's lives that much easier. And we did. My dad has rehabilitated his body, my brother is graduating from the special education department and can dress himself, and amongst all these blessings in my life, my grandmother is now devoid of the cancer that once threatened her life. But beyond all these improvements, I was metaphysically revitalized; my appreciation of both family and philosophy were
Of course, as any other young girl, I didn’t really know what real pain was. I mean the type of pain when losing someone, more specifically, having someone taken away from you. I remember everything like it had just happened this morning. Long story short, I had my dad pulled away from my arms due to immigration issues. I wasn’t easy going through that. I had to go to school with a smile on my face and let no one know what had just happened. Up to this day, I get choked up just thinking about it. It wasn’t easy then, and it's still not easy today. With all the pain going around, I never stopped to realize I wasn’t the only one who had experienced that. As I got older, I became aware that many of my fellow classmates had the same thing done to them, sometimes even worse.
“Mommy?” I asked laying in bed with the covers half pulled up to my face. “Yes sweetie?” my mother said downcast. “What’s going to happen to him?” I inquired, a lost look across my face. “I don’t know honey, we will have to wait and see.” As she said this you could tell she believed it, yet she was crestfallen because she couldn’t give a better answer. This was me, at 7 years old, looking at my mother with a fat lip and my father, who had just been removed from our home with his hands behind his back in a police cruiser. I can’t say I was overly sad, after watching my father abuse my mother I wasn’t subject to sadness for him. I was worried about whether or not we would have a home. If one parent was gone, how would we pay for it? Within the month I would be moving to an apartment, then soon on to Hampton, Iowa, where I would start a whole new life. At some point in life, all people must overcome adversity.
There were many days that passed when I felt as though I wasn’t going to make it and I felt as though I didn’t deserve to be alive, but who is really ready to take care of a child anyhow? I wasn’t. Then one day I woke up and realized that my life would go on, and that I just had to do the best I could and learn from my mistakes.
After patiently waiting a while for my Granny Jo’s results to come back, which felt like years! it finally came that day my Granda Alfie went to hospital with my Granny too see if things where looking up or tragic. This was a very tense time in my life, however I had so much hope my Granny would be good as new as she is a brave women. The feeling of the wait was unbearable. I remember my mum sitting me down that day to tell me the news which I was hoping was great new… The news was not so great not at all! My Granny Jo had lung cancer - my heart sunk rock bottom when I heard this news I felt my pulse in my ears, my head was about to explode. Everything in the room felt distance I did not know what to feel or do. This was a time in all my family’s life and mine which was a huge change everything around me felt so different and I felt I had a lot of growing up to do to be there for my Granny and my Family. Everyone w...
It was June 6, 2011. I remember taking my mother to the County Hospital’s emergency room. She seemed extremely exhausted; her eyes were half-closed and yellow, and she placed her elbow on the armchair, resting her head on her palm. I remember it was crowded and the wait was long, so she wanted to leave. I was the only one there with her, but I did not allow her to convince me to take her home. I told her in Spanish, “Mom, let’s wait so that we can get this over with and know what’s going on with you. You’ll see everything is okay, and we’ll go home later on.” I wish then and now that would have been the case. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to many parts of her body including her lungs and kidneys. The doctor said to me not considering that I was a minor and my mother’s daughter, “Her disease is very advanced and we don’t think she will live longer than a year.” With this devastating news, I did not know what to do. I thought to myself that perhaps I should cry, or try to forget and take care of her as best I could and make her laugh to ease her pain.
When we were leaving very early in the morning last month, to take Tori off the college for the first time, my mom sent me a text. It was just four short words. “Love you. Be brave.” It was her prayer to me as I struggled to let go of my first child, to send her off into the big world and hope that she would embrace her new home, do well, but perhaps most importantly as a mom, that no one would break her heart and that she would be safe. I have pondered since that text as to why those words changed my entire day. Why I was able to drive to Chestertown that day, be there for the entire day, unpacking and taking in that we would go home with one less family member in the car and that our lives had changed dramatically in that moment. I