Cancer. It’s the one word no one in the world wants to hear. Do you want to know what’s even worse? Hearing it 4 months after you run 15 years old, during your freshman year of high school. So many things start to run through your mind once the doctor has officially said it. Things like, am I going to receive chemotherapy or radiation? I’ve never heard anything good about cancer so this must mean something really bad is about to happen to me, right? Hair though. What about my hair? I don’t want to be bald. I don’t know any girl in high school that wants to be bald. At this point, you don’t know what to think. You halfway listen to the doctor talk to your mom while you also ask yourself 100 questions about what you are going to tell people, whom you are going to tell, and how they will handle it. By this time, you don’t know up from down or even left from right. Everything you thought you ever knew just becomes a sudden blur.
That’s how my story started. I was 15 years old and almost finished with my freshman year of high school. As you grow up, you always hear that high school will be the best 4 years of your life. I, however, was one of those students who thought differently. On May 2, 2011, I went to see a neurosurgeon to find out if surgery was possible for my brain tumor due to its location (optic pathway glioma – aka, my eye nerves, just behind the chiasm). Turns out surgery would never be an option. The surgeon referred me to an oncologist. Oh joy, a cancer doctor.
I met with my doctor, Dr. Claire Mazewski, on May 26, 2011. The minute she walked in the room I knew I would be okay. She had this warm glow about her and you could tell she was a caring doctor who would do whatever it took to make someone better and that is exactly what she did. She sat down with my mom, grandfather, and me and told us everything we wanted to know. We discussed how we found my tumor, that I had already seen a surgeon, and that I would go through 12-16 months of chemotherapy. Was she serious about me having an entire year of chemotherapy? This woman must have been crazy!
A child life specialist, Molly, came into the room and showed me what would happen when I came every week for treatments. She had this cute little doll with a port in its chest. Molly showed me what the port was, how it worked, how it looked under the skin, and what it felt like. She covered everything I needed to know about it. After being educated about childhood cancer by these wonderful ladies for 4 hours, we scheduled my surgery to insert the port on June 10, 2011. I received my first chemotherapy treatment a week later, and the following week I attended Camp Sunshine (a camp for children with cancer), and was administered my second treatment.
From then on, life had a lot of ups and downs. Some weeks were really good, while others were really bad. I went from being sick, to be happy, to being upset, and back to being sick. It felt like a never-ending cycle. I met a lot of amazing friends along the way, and also lost a few. Cancer changes your life in so many ways. Sadly, some people never get to see what opportunities are available to them when they are finally given the title of a survivor. Some people survive, like me, get to continue on with life carrying the badge of cancer with them, and I am so thankful to be one of those people.
Before I was diagnosed, I knew I wanted to go to school to become a pediatric oncologist. Once I was diagnosed and finished treatment, I knew it had to be fate. I was pulled down this path and I’m not going to abandon it now. I plan to attend Georgia Regents University starting in the fall of 2014. I want to major in biology with a minor in psychology, then attend graduate school to become a physician’s assistant. I want to brighten someone’s life and be an inspiration to others, like my doctor was for me. I want to research to find cures and help other children so they don’t have to go through this. Children don’t receive much funding. So if I can’t financially fund it, I want to be there to emotionally and medically support it.
On May 23, 2014, I will graduate high school. I don’t have the best memories of my high school career because my social life was on hold depending on how sick I was when the weekend came. But looking back, that never mattered. I made it, and now I am a cancer survivor. I will soon graduate high school and go on to college, and hopefully improve a few lives along the way.