Just a couple days after my birthday, Feb. 2; I went home for a school vacation. It was Presidents Break actually. When I got off the bus for transportation, I was rushed to the emergency room. A couple days later I was told I had a tumor. Have you ever realized something’s wrong with you but you couldn’t quite figure out what exactly? Twice in the past four years I’ve struggled with an illness that was challenging to fight. But the struggle made me a better person and look at life differently.
“Can I go to medical? That was the question I had asked my teacher Mrs. Miller in 8th grade when I started to get these unbearable back pains, irritating fevers and nausea. One back pain turned into several, one fever turned into crying and nausea turned into crawling up in my bed like a new born with and infection. Mrs. Miller sent me to medical as I was crying in her class. I cried through the hall all the way to medical. My stomach was already large due to something that was not supposed to be in there. When the doctor checked me he felt something and all I could think was OH NO!
He then further told me that I need to get a stool soften so that I can poop, even though I was just a 13 year old girl I knew that was not the problem. The whole time this unknown thing in my stomach was causing me to have a bowel movement but it was not that I was constipated. I was rushed to the emergency room. My mom and I were in the emergency room waiting anxiously for the nurse to call my name. “Mrs. White”, they finally called me. The nurse asked me questions and I got a PET and CAT scan done. Finally a couple days later I met with the doctor and my mom and they told me I had a mass.
I didn’t know what a mass was but then my older sister told me it meant I had a tumor. From there the game plan was to simply go through treatment within a quick 3 months. This one day the nurse started putting the medicine in my needle cords and after a little bit the air started getting thin. I couldn’t breathe. I started tapping on my best to get the nurse attention since I couldn’t talk. The nurse turned quick and called a code Red on the floor. After that day my treatment plan that was supposed to be a quick 3 months with 6 rounds of chemo to 6 months with 6 rounds of treatment.
Chemotherapy give many side effects such as losing all the hair on your body, gaining and losing weight and no appetite. When I first started chemo treatments, the chemo was so strong within the first 2 weeks my hair started falling out. I remember the one day I just got my hair done and I was about to go out with my mom so I was in the bathroom doing my hair and when I looked on the floor there was all this hair. Right then and there is when I knew the chemo was doing its job. Chemo also gives long term effects. One of the long term effect that I have is heat flash. Heat flashes has to do with menopause.
Due to the enlarge tumor it had damaged my ovary so they had to take it out. You would think that’s bad but nothing is worst then getting diagnosed with cancer twice and losing both ovaries and living with the thought of not having no kids. Throughout my life I have faced one of the biggest challenges. A real life and death situation. Not knowing whats wrong with your body is scary, especially when you find out its cancer. Whenever someone hear cancer the first thing they think about is death, so finding out at a young age that you have been diagnosed with an illness is hard.
It’s hard when the hospital become your home since you in and out so much. The struggle of getting myself back into my normal self was going to be hard but it was a challenge I was willing to take. Being diagnosed with cancer was not a scary thing to me as a 13 year old girl. I was more scared of the unknown and the fact that I didn’t know much about cancer. I approached the challenge with a mindset that I will be the girl who beats cancer and survive. Cancer affected me in a good way, it made me appreciate more and accept life as it live because I am here on this earth when an illness could have taken my life away.