We come in contact with a wide variety of people throughout our day. Whether it’s the guy in the library that peeked up from his biology textbook when you sat across the room from him or the girl you smiled at as you walked past on your way to class. No matter the difference, they are all people and they all have a different story. A story you don’t know.
I know a girl, so near and dear to my heart, that has that story that very few know. Or at least, you couldn’t tell by the way she carries herself every day. In passing, Rachelle will smile and say hi. If you need help figuring out if the oven is preheated to the right temperature for your chicken nuggets she’ll drop what she’s doing — just to make sure the oven is on and at 375.
She is someone who looks out for the good of others before herself — I’m sure we all know someone like that. It makes sense that she would be going to school for nursing. She carries the weight of a full-time student with a part-time job — oh, and don’t forget the 16 hours a week of nursing clinical on top of that. But she has a smile that masks her load.
Behind that smile you can’t tell that she goes to BioLife every week to donate plasma, because the $80 gets her home every weekend to sit beside her mother’s bed while she suffers from MDS —myelodysplastic syndrome.
Now if you're like me and your brain just doesn’t function properly when it comes to science-related things, let me explain this in the simplest of terms (thank you, Rachelle, for your nursing brain). MDS is basically cancer of the bone marrow, causing the production of damaged blood cells. In her mother’s case, it's her white blood cells — which help the body fight infection.
It took endless trips to the doctor to finally figure out what was wrong, and once the doctors confirmed the MDS, the long road back to health began.
Right now her mother is taking residence at the Richard M. Schulze Family American Cancer Society Hope Lodge — a place where they provide free housing to cancer patients that are waiting treatment, in treatment or doing follow-up visits. She is currently waiting for a bone marrow transplant — the only option they have for potentially curing her condition. If doctors can’t do the transplant soon, progression of the damaged cells will spread within the year, turning her MDS into leukemia.
For the transplant to even begin, her body needs to be at the healthiest point possible. Because her damaged white blood cells have lowered her immune system, she has to be extremely careful when coming in contact with any person, food or thing.
She isn’t allowed to be at work and if she goes out into public, she has to wear a mask to keep the germs out. The Hope Lodge provides a sterile environment. While being in the Hope Lodge, a caregiver needs to be with her at all times. This requires family to go through training and take a lot of time off from work to help care for her—a majority of the time off, an unpaid leave.
As you can imagine, all the time off for a variety of family members, living off of one parent’s income and medical bills racking up can really add additional stress to this already stressful world. But for Rachelle, you can’t tell.
While lately her weekends are spent at her mother’s side and her weeks are filled with countless hours of studying, she still comes back on Sunday evenings and helps me figure out how to run the oven or make myself something besides ramen for dinner. She laughs along with me as we talk about my weekend shenanigans.
I’m guilty, like I’m sure most of us are, of forgetting that everyone has a story we don’t know. We tend to forget that there are worse things in the world than only getting 67 likes on an Instagram photo or the latest frappuccino flavor at Starbucks. And we wouldn’t know because it’s all hidden behind a smile.
The next time you pass that kid in the library or on your way to class, smile and say hello. You don’t know the weight they may be carrying on their shoulders.
