My Deal With Cancer
12-Year-Old Cancer Survivor
Last year when I started 5th
grade I didn’t know that a kid could get cancer. For a couple of months a
lump in my right thigh kept getting bigger. My mom said the lump would go
away. When it got so big that I named it Mt. Crookie, my mom took me to a
doctor. The doctor said it was a lump of fat (a lypoma) and not to worry
about it. Mt. Crookie started hurting and I didn’t like having it on
my
leg. My mom took me to a surgeon to see if he could take it
out. He did a biopsy, and on April 1, 2005, I was diagnosed with
cancer. I thought everybody who got cancer died.
I met Dr. Tishler at Children’s Hospital. He said we could fight cancer. He told me about chemo, and surgery. It was a little hard to understand everything, but I learned that fighting cancer was going to take a long time.
I found out that chemo makes you really sick, and it made my hair fall out. At first I didn’t like being bald because some kids made fun of me. After a while I got used to it and I even liked being bald. I liked not having to comb my hair.
Every three weeks I had to go get chemo. Chemo was so gross. Sometime I was in the hospital for three days and sometimes I was there for six days. It went back and forth between short and long chemo treatments. My mom said we were fighting a war and each chemo was a battle. I had a lot of battles. When I was home I had to get a lot of shots, blood draws and home IV’s. Sometimes in between chemos I had to go to the hospital for blood transfusions, platelets or fevers. I have had more needles in me than all the people in my family put together.
After three months of chemo I had to have surgery. That was really scary because the doctor was going to have to take out so much of the muscle in my leg. I told him I didn’t want to have the surgery, but he said he had to do it to save my life. It was another battle. Then the day before the surgery, I found out that the chemo worked so well that the surgery wasn’t going to take so much muscle. I still had to have a big chunk taken out, but now I have a really cool scar.
After surgery I had to have nine more months of chemo. I had my last chemo in the middle of April of this year. It took a lot of battles, but I am a survivor and I won the war against my cancer. I didn’t win on my own. I couldn’t have done it without Dr. Tishler and his team, and all of the nurses and other people at Children’s Hospital. I couldn’t have done it without the American Cancer Society and all the research that had been done before to help with cancer treatments. I couldn’t have done it without my family and friends and those who supported me.
Last year my parents took me to the Luminaria ceremony at the Relay for Life. I had just finished a round of chemo and I didn’t feel well. My dad carried me around the track because I felt so weak and sick. I am so thankful that this year I can walk on my own. I am so thankful to be a survivor. I want to help the American Cancer Society raise money so that better cancer treatments can be found. I hope that someday there will be a cure for cancer. That is why we need to do the Relay for Life. I’m grateful that I get to see another day.
“My mom said we were fighting a war
and each chemo was a battle.”