The first time cancer affected my family, I was 5 years old. My 18-month-old brother, Max, had been suffering from brutal headaches so my parents took him to the doctor. When my mother broke the news to me, I was a bit underwhelmed. I didn't know what cancer was or what it did.
In the week after diagnosis, several doctors had told my mother to simply "bring him home and enjoy the time you have left with him." But my mother, being the determined woman she is, did not accept these prognoses. So my parents and my little brother left for a clinical trial at New York's Tisch Hospital, whose pediatric oncologist had hope for Max. Soon it was decided that they had to relocate to the NYC for the foreseeable future, and I was to be left in South Florida with my grandparents to continue my schooling.
Over the year they were gone, I visited my brother whenever my school schedule allowed. The first time I saw him, he had staples in his head and was covered in tubes and wires. The next time I saw him he was laughing, full of energy. After over a year of nonstop treatments, my parents and brother were finally able to move back home. Thinking the worst was over, my grandparents and I felt relieved. We would be a family again — no more three-hour plane rides to see each other, no more worrying about the disease. When my parents came home, they announced that they were getting divorced.
Fast forward to 2012. The ups and downs of Max's cancer had now blurred into distant memories, and the staples covering the back of his head healed into a scar. My mother had remarried just four years prior and we now had another little brother, Jackson. I was starting high school, Max was starting fourth grade, and Jackson was barely starting Pre-K. My mother had been complaining of chest pains for a few days but none of us thought anything of it. A biopsy was scheduled for the next day as a precaution.
I remember getting home from school one day, excited to tell my parents that I had no homework. I walked into the house and was greeted with my grandmother looking somber, telling me my mother needed to talk to me. I was confused, thinking I was probably in trouble for not cleaning my room again. When I walked into her room the first thing my mom told me was "it's breast cancer." My mind immediately replayed memories of Max, bald and crying, covered in bandages and tubes. "It's not that bad," she told me after I began crying. Naively, I believed her. Now, I know she only said it to calm me.
Cancer had yet again affected my family, and I was only 13.
My mother underwent a double mastectomy within the week of her diagnosis. She came home from the hospital crying, weak, and in pain. She looked so different with a big white bandage around her now-flat chest, and I remember wondering if she was able to breathe correctly with it on. Unfortunately, the surgery did not prevent the cancer from spreading, so my mother underwent chemotherapy and multiple other surgeries.
My brothers became different people throughout her treatment, and so did I. Mom and Jeremy (our stepfather) were gone nearly 24/7.
Mom's doctors were three hours away in Orlando, so most appointments required overnight stays. When she was home, spending time with her was hard because she was either tired or in pain. Through it all, she fought the disease valiantly. Things were going well until 2014, when the cancer metastasized into her bones. Her chemo changed, she underwent even more surgeries, and worst of all, her diagnosis was now terminal.
As my mother got sicker and sicker, my family became more and more strained. We all fought with each other constantly. We didn't understand how to deal with the pain, so we ignored it. When I went off to college in 2016, my family packed up and moved to Orlando so my mother could be closer to her doctors. The cancer stayed stable for a few years. The most recent diagnosis came in late 2019 when her doctors found that the cancer had metastasized yet again, this time to the liver. My mother has undergone 17 different surgeries in the past seven years, multiple different chemos, and enough pain to last a lifetime. Her next scan will be performed in March, and we are all hopeful that her new chemo is doing its job.
Throughout everything, my family has found the resilience to stick together and help each other through the best and the worst times.
I am extremely lucky and proud to say that while cancer has impossibly hurt us, it has only made us stronger.
