I wish that I could begin to explain what it’s like to be so proud of your mom that you can’t even fathom what it would be like to live up to her standards. My mother is the most amazing woman in the world. She has gone through more than most people have in their entire lifetime. She may not have had it all growing up, but she still tried her hardest and gave me the amazing life that I have today. She was far from spoiled, but she did her best to spoil me as much as she could. She is by far the strongest woman who I have ever met in my life and I am not exaggerating in any shape or form.

You would think that someone who had already been through more hardships in their life wouldn’t deserve another, but that’s not how life works I guess. I t wasn’t until the diagnosis came that I realized that our family wasn’t an exception–cancer had invaded our lives too.

Sometimes, you hear stories of what other people are suffering through and you have the slight thought in the back of your mind that it could never happen to you. It’s so hard to grasp the concept that it can happen to anyone.

I remember the feeling so vividly. I was taking summer dance classes at a sleep-away academy when my parents came up to visit for the weekend. They made it seem so nonchalant, yet my heart still sank into my stomach and I felt my jaw drop. I knew that it wasn’t going to kill her, but the thought still crossed my mind. I acted as though it wasn’t a big deal because I felt that I needed to be strong for her. I knew that if I cried, then she would cry too.

My mother is a very lucky woman. The ovarian cancer was caught early and it wasn’t a severe case at all. She needed to go through chemotherapy and she needed a hysterectomy, but these procedures are done so frequently that I really didn’t think that anything could go wrong. After months of being in the hospital, I realized that the healing process was the worst part. The healing process wasn’t going as planned and I won’t go into the gory details, but her scars shouldn’t have opened up they way that they did.

The day had finally come where she was able to be released from the hospital. The doctors told us that she was ready and, of course, we believed them. I mean, they were doctors. My dad was skeptical about her release so early, but he listened to the doctors' advice and drove to the hospital to pick her up. The doctors were very quickly proven wrong. On the way home from the hospital, she had a seizure in the passenger seat. I can only imagine what it must have felt like in that instant for my dad. He quickly called 911 and turned the car right back around.

Obviously, I do hold a little bit of a grudge against the doctors in that particular hospital for caring more about opening up a room rather than the well-being of my mother. Maybe they really did think that she was ready to heal on her own. However, that part doesn’t necessarily matter now. The part that matters now is that she is better. My mother is cancer free.

Cancer tried tearing my family apart. Between the insane amount of hospital bills, the lack of sleep, and the sickness that it put my mother through, I literally felt like this cancer was creating a whirlwind of emotions and a domino effect of problems. However, cancer did not tear my family apart. In fact, it brought us closer together. We value life a little more each day. We realize that things like this can happen to anyone. We also realize that we were lucky enough to have a cancer survivor.

My mother is my role model in every single way. The way that she carries herself is impeccable. Her charismatic personality is something that I strive for. The hard work that she puts into her job and her family life is absolutely beautiful. Cancer isn’t a sickness that you get over in a day and I know that a lot of people understand that it doesn’t just effect the person who is physically suffering through it. It takes over your entire life and the lives of the people around you. I’m thankful that my mother beat it and I hope that one day we find a cure. Cancer survivors may be free of the illness, but the effects last a lifetime.