I had cancer and I’ve told this story so much that it’s almost mechanical now to tell but most of the time when I do tell it, it's without emotion because I know the second that I open myself up to that things go downhill fast. Two emotions arise when that happens one of nightmares and another that brings tears. Cancer sucks.
The whole story is quite a long one and to be honest I don’t remember some of it because it was so long ago but the big things, the ones worth remembering I still do.
In eighth grade as spring break was around the corner the only thing I was expecting was to relax and sleep a lot however I had something else coming. My cancer was found in a stroke of luck at a doctor’s check-up. I’ve been told that if it had been a month later I wouldn’t be here today. So many things happened very quickly after that. I met with many doctors even one who I would become very good friends with. They threw me right into surgery expecting to be able to remove the tumor immediately but they ran in to a bit of trouble. The tumor which they had thought had been only on the right side of my abdomen from the right ovary had actually come from the left ovary. It had become so large that taking it out was near impossible without removing important organs in my pelvis.
With this new information they sent me into the hospital for three rounds of chemotherapy. They went great or at least the best that they could have gone. My body held up incredibly well, as I was told by the doctors. My numbers (simple term for platelets and red and white blood cells among other thing) which are normally supposed to drop to levels lower than normal for the human body, stayed at the normal levels on varying ever so slightly. I never felt bad, whether physically or emotionally. I never was scared, never thought about the worst case scenario. I was always happy.
Things kind of turned for the worst after those three rounds. My doctor scheduled me for more scans to determine what should happen next. It turns out that those three rounds had had very little effects on the tumor and it was practically the size it had been before we started. He sent me back in the hospital for three more rounds. After that my body began to react negatively to the chemo, like it was supposed to. I was constantly exhausted and sick. I lost 20 lbs. that summer because of the chemo. It made me lose my appetite and caused me to fear the idea of eating anything in case my body couldn't keep it down.
After that time in the hospital my tumor appeared to be small enough to be surgically removed. Before the surgery, like every surgery, they laid out worst and best case scenarios and the risks. I never listen to those speeches, I’m always too concerned with the needles and not somehow miraculously waking up in the middle of the surgery.
I came out of the surgery, happy to be done and be out. My doctor came in within the next couple of days to explain to me what had exactly happened during the surgery. Most of it I didn’t understand, all I really got from everything he said was that I was done. With chemo, with surgery, with cancer. That’s all I cared about. Now I understand it all better.
The short term effects I could deal with, they weren’t the hardest things to handle, it’s the long term effects that still have me wondering how I feel about them. One of those long term effects if because of the chemo. I lost a part of my hearing to chemo. My lack of hearing really proved itself when, one day my friend was messing around with a frequency app and above or below a certain frequency I couldn’t hear anything while everyone else in the room cringed and covered their ears.
The second but most important long term effect that becomes more apparent as I get older is what happened in that surgery years ago. I had something called a complete hysterectomy, they had to remove my reproductive system to make sure the cancer didn’t come back. At first I wasn’t really affected by the news, to be honest childbirth scared me to death because my pain tolerance is non-existent and I don’t think I ever wanted to go through that. I knew I wanted to have kids though so I already knew what I wanted was to adopt. Now, and even more the older I get I realize what I will never get the chance to have. A child that I can say I was there with even before their birth, a child that I can say was and is a part of me. I will be able to one day call an adopted child my own, I know, but what I also know is that it won’t be the same. Don’t take that the wrong way though, I will love my future children as much as I possibly can.
Cancer sucks but it changes you in a way that you never could have expected, you become a person you never thought you would become. So many things happened that I can look back on and wish it could never have happened but I am thankful for it. I am because the person who I am today is all because of what happened then. I am so proud of what I’ve overcome and so happy with who I am today and for that I am grateful for all the experiences of my life, including fighting cancer.
