Loss strikes every person’s life at some point, its evolution, the circle of life, natural selection. Eventually it’s bound to happen. This loss was different because she was here without fully being here. My ship was cracked and slowly sink it was surreal. I always knew it happened to people. But never in a million years did I expect it to happen to her. And I most definitely never expected the effect it would have on me. How it literally left my world spinning in different directions. You always hear about the victim and their family but not usually their friends.
From this experience l’ve realized that a best friend really is family, it’s not just some cliche. From the moment I got the poignant call my world (along with my summer plans) would come crashing down. Honestly, as hard as I try to remember the official call from the emergency room, I can’t. When something traumatic happens your mind blocks it out to protect yourself, I think thats what my brain subconsciously did. Not that what happened was even traumatic just for me, it’s the most intense hardship that’s ever struck me. Though I do remember it was a Wednesday we went to school as usual, but that night was unusual.
Usually my phone is blowing up with texts, but it was not, which was especially weird because that girl was literally ALWAYS on her phone, texting, tweeting, instagramming, the whole shebang. It was concerning but I figured she was sleeping or eating. Instead she was up in Boston at the Children’s Hospital. What bothers me the most is not only that I couldn’t do anything but that | didn’t put together the pieces. Granted, I don’t have a medical degree, but l’m a hardcore grey’s fan. The signs were all there. It also drives me absolutely insane that I spent nearly all my summer watching my best friend suffer.
When she was on the drugs she is miserable and when she is on a break from them she is still miserable because of withdrawal symptoms. I’m the kind of person to take the extra yard to help someone, not that I’ve helped a little old lady across the road but if I could I would. Watching her cry and not being able to help her caused me pain. Worse than watching her pain was watching all that her mom has to go through. Without a doubt last summer were my most emotional moments in my life. My Sophomore summer into Junior year was the hardest experience in my entire life.
Just imagine being a sixteen year old and having to deal with your best friend having cancer. Most of the time I don’t know how to deal with it. Tears would just roll down my face a lot not because I thought she was going to die, but kind of because I thought she was going to die or subconsciously I thought that. Even though it was miserable and hard I try to look at it with a positive view. Her pain and suffering has inspired me to become a doctor. Each time I went to chemotherapy with her I saw all the little kids with frowns from pain.
Hodgkins Lymphoma has helped me to see that my ambition in life is to help people, to help those in pain. I can not in anyway handle being an oncologist, but ten years from now I can see myself being an orthopedist or a general surgeon. After spending mounds of time of time at the hospital I realized it’s a life changing place. One of the times when I went with her we saw a young boy about our age with the lower part of his leg connect to his thigh backwards, he was missing a knee cap. The boys patella was flourishing with osteosarcoma and they were forced to amputate it.
Their plan was to construct one from using parts of his ankle. The evolutionary idea to do that was miraculous and it astonished me. In life I want to think up how to keep a young teen on the track team when he’s better like his doctors. So maybe what they say about every situation has a silver-lining is true, and mine was discovering what my future will hold. Helping people for a living will be filled with happiness to a point where it would not even feel like a job. Happiness for me is helping people. When Emma got diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t know what to do.
It has been the hardest experience I have ever had to face. Even just when people ask how she is it’s hard to answer but) have gotten better at it because if Emma has to be strong so can 1. This summer I have matured so much, I have truly grown from this experience. Drugged moody teenagers can be hard to handle and so I learned to be more patient. I try to look at this experience has hard as it is as a glass half full situation it might be miserable most of the time but there are smiles and giggles once in awhile as well as shedding a new light on my life.