One day the birds are still chirping, the sun is still shining, and the grass is still green. The next day you’re struck with the words that a family member or a friend has cancer, and the world nearly stops spinning, growing, and shining.
Your mind wanders and starts to think why it wasn’t you? Why them? What about the family? The spouse? The expenses? The pain they’re feeling? The confusion running through their head? Those thoughts wander, uninvited, into your own mind because the worst disease that could enter into the walls of a loved one’s body have hit; and they hit like a hurricane.
Just in 2015, according to seer.cancer.gov, cancer is expected to be diagnosed in 1,658,370 people (in the US) and is expected to take the lives of 589,430 individuals. Now, it’s most likely that you have known somebody that has fought the battle that cancer brings or is currently fighting or has passed away because of the evils cancer brings to healthy cells. Cancer has become a wicked illness that corrupts the family and friends surrounding the patient.
The cancer patients that have been in my life, and those that are currently battling today, are the glimpse of hope I have. They are motivated to stay strong, driven to remain courageous, and inclined to keep happiness in the air around them regardless of the treatments, side effects, or bad news. I know that every single one of them have been around intelligent, determined doctors that are devoted to come up with a plan of action in regards to treating and curing their cancer. I also know that they encounter dark days in which the terrors of cancer enter their minds and crush their spirits.
Cancer is a monster. Cancer is evil. Cancer is life-altering.
Whether cancer takes the life of a loved one or leaves them to live on and beat the disease so they are able to continue on the path of life, one thing's for sure: Cancer showcases how life as we know it is incredibly fragile.
Just as you would care so much about someone in your life going through treatment on a weekly basis, hear about a kid in your community get diagnosed with leukemia, or see someone in the grocery store with no hair, this is how we should care about every single person in our life. Time will only tell who stays and whose time is going to be cut short. That might sound dark, but its the truth, and we all need to take the time to say the words “I love you” more often.
Cancer has taught me a few things, believe it or not. When I lost a friend and classmate of mine sophomore year of high school, it taught me how to handle the stages of grief and how to appreciate the community around me in times of sorrow. When my friend's dad passed away due to cancer, it taught me how to react and be the strong friend I needed to be. And when a couple cousins of mine were diagnosed with cancer, it reminded me that even the closest to your heart, the most fit, successful, normal, everyday people are not immune to the disease, and that preventative doctors appointments as I grow up may not be a bad idea.
Cancer will be cured. I believe that wholeheartedly. I hope to be around to see it happen; to see the life-changing research be made regarding some form of treatment that kills all cancer cells so fast that a day in the doctors office will never take the place of a day spent outside or doing something a patient truly loves.
I want to be able to not have a feeling of sorrow, anger, and guilt when I get told the news that cancer struck yet another loved one. I want to see the day when cancer is just a disease and that it doesn't take much to get it out of the body. I want to see a 100 percent survival rate. I want to see lives lived long and full without any abnormal cells attacking healthy organs ever again.
(For more information or to donate to cancer research see http://www.cancer.org/, https://www.stjude.org/)
