Suddenly I stopped on a page when I was flipping through my history textbook. Transfixed by a photo of concentration camp survivors recently, rescued, I studied the image closely. They were all weak from malnourishment and you could see their ribs. Many had cuts and scars from forced labor or abuse. All their heads were shaved and they wore the same uniform to strip them of their identity. Everything was taken from them, and they were dehumanized. I could not help but think that this photo is printed in potentially thousands of copies of history books to represent what concentration camp survivors looked like.
To think of what a survivor is, an important questions begs to be answered: “What did they survive? Clues like the uniforms and bulging bones give context to what they endured to now be considered a survivor. People can survive all kings of things. Like cancer survivors, painted as sadly thin, protruding veins, bald heads, surgery scars, missing body parts, weak, and the same hospital gown uniform or ribbon with respective color(s). Do we tend to view cancer survivors similarly to how we view was survivors; both suffering unimaginable pain and terror, often with visual and mental differences or indications of a survivor?
Survivorship does not necessarily depict a weak, helpless, or dehumanized person who had just enough strength to survive. However, cancer is like fighting a war. A one-man war within yourself, where you are your only ally, and the enemy is within. Physically, your body and organs fail. Mentally, you must keep yourself going strong, but can’t help crying when visitors leave, both leaving scars. But surviving this war is more than the image of the scars, the loss of hair, and in some cases, the loss of body parts that cause you to stick out like a sore thumb, for better or for worse. Gradually, you regain weight and strength (in many more ways than you may initially realize), your natural skin color returns, your hair grows out, and you’re free from the restraints of hospital gowns.
Survivorship is more than the helpless image people like to create to associate with that you endured. Surviving is walking across the stage at my high school graduation eight days after my last round of chemotherapy. Surviving is starting college three months after my last round of chemo and two weeks after my last surgery. It’s playing around with hats, scarves, and awkward in-between-length hairstyles. It’s pushing myself to make the dean’s during my first semester of college (of which i am still on to this day). It’s walking into my biannual oncologist checkup and the nurses not recognizing me at first. It’s my oncologist hugging me and nearly breaking out in tears seeing the difference from a weak, scared, and frail girl to a strong and healthy woman. It’s knowing that if I have the strength to beat cancer, I have the strength to do anything, if I try.
Survivorship, to me, is breaking the stigma that having cancer is the end. While it is still such a traumatic event that affects many people and their families, it it still possible to achieve your dreams despite navigating such a difficult obstacle. Survivors are just normal people who were dealt some difficult cards, and we play them the best we can, just like anyone else.
~~Brooklyn Hughes
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During my never-ending search to find myself, I hit rock bottom emotionally. I became extremely depressed and drove people away. I became so alone, shut off in my own world of insanity, I became so desperate for a way out I became suicidal. My world became a dark place and the only way I could get out my emotions was with poetry. I wrote many poems, some about misery, depression, pain, life, hope and poems about and death. See them all at;
http://www.childhood-cancer-survivor.com/content/poems-faith-hope-triumph-and-tragedy
Survivorship is, in part, the memories of the ordeal in the oncology ward. This is especially true for young children.
In the hospital I met an Angel, and her name was Sarah. She was in the room next to me and she had leukemia too. She was a very sweet girl and we had fun together, she helped me not to feel as different. We shared a lot of things like pizza parties, we played in the art room and we gave each other the drugs that were impossible to take. It seemed much easier to swallow when she gave them to me, compared to 5 nurses holding me down while they poured it down my throat. Out of all my friends on the fourth floor she was the best. She was an amazing friend even if she was only 3.
But eventually all angels must go back to heaven. And about a year later my angel Sarah went back to heaven. She died in her sleep, because the doctors failed to find a match for her bone marrow transplant.
My Name is Sarah
By CHRISTINE MULVIHILL
My name is Sarah, I am but 4
Trapped staring at the ceiling and at the floor
I don’t even understand what I’m fighting for.
I never did wrong I always did what was right
Now it hurts so bad I can’t sleep at night.
Why is my mommy crying what is going through her head
I’d give her a hug if I was allowed to leave my bed.
My stomach is starving but cannot eat
I want to get up but I’m much too weak
I lay down my head and drift off to sleep
I pray to the lord for my soul to keep.
Then I stop breathing and through the dark I see a light,
My name is Sarah and cancer murdered me tonight.
It made me sad just to look at the empty bed on that fourth floor in room 420. Although it was 10 years ago that she died, I will always remember her because she will forever be in my heart.
Read my whole story at;
http://www.childhood-cancer-survivor.com/
What If Faith is Not Enough?
My grandmother, a retired nurse was a very special person; she always knew that I would overcome my illness. When she visited me in the hospital at CHEO she would take me to the chapel and I would stare at the enormously realistic wood carved statue of Jesus. I would ask “even though you look like you are in more pain than me, can you ask your father to help me.”
Then my grandmother and I would go back to my room and say this prayer together;
And now I lay me down to sleep and I pray you lord my soul to keep, but if I shall die before I wake, I pray you Lord my soul to take.
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What If Faith is Not Enough
By CHRISTINE MULVIHILL
When reality finally hits you it hurts
When the truth comes into focus it’s brutally painful.
Hope isn’t always enough
It’s not always a happy ending.
What happens when faith is not enough?
I get hot flashes
My depression splashes
My soul is cold like stone,
the fear of being alone.
So now I lay me down to sleep
I pray you lord my soul to keep
Don’t let me die before I wake
I pray you lord my soul do not take.
I barely have a past
And may have no future
Empty pages of a book
A story left unwritten
A life left unlived
A hope left in the dust.
Please don’t take me yet
Your mercy you won’t regret
I am down on my knees
Begging you please
Don’t take me away.
At night I dream a misty graveyard
A tombstone the name I cannot see
A flashlight in the darkness
A figure so lifeless I cannot breathe,
Then I awake not as fearless as I may seem.
If this is my future
And if it comes to pass
And this breath be my last
Then this thought to you I cast.
What if faith is not enough?
Then life would be rather tough
With nothing to believe in
And nothing to justify
Nothing to keep you sane
Nothing to grasp when you fall
You will have nothing,
nothing at all.
Sometimes that is how I am
Falling in the darkness
With nothing to take hold
This feeling leaves me cold
hearted, soulless, empty.
All I feel is the pain of being unreal
No one knows how this life feels,
when you are so lifeless.
So now I lay me down to cry
I pray you lord you can’t let me die.
Now I lay me down to sleep
Close my eyes without a peep
Never to be opened again.