Living with cancer

Living with cancer as a teen

Anonymous, Bear Truth News contributer

With breast cancer awareness going on in the month of October, The Bear Truth Newspaper wanted to do a tribute piece to survivors, and those going through cancer. Because this is a student-run publication, we wanted to give students a perspective of a teen going through cancer. Our anonymous source was generous enough to provide their story to try and help other students who are faced with cancer, whether it be them or their family members, know they’re not alone.

Living And Surviving

It’s hard being a teen, harder having cancer, but that’s what I have now. For some reason that I’m not sure of even, I’m okay. Because I know I’m not just trying to survive, I’m living too.The hardest part about living with cancer is seeing how much you can’t do. While other kids at my church are able to feel normal that’s something I can’t feel. Not when you have a tumor in your head.

I was born in Toledo, Ohio on June 3, 1999. My mom working as a real estate agent, my dad had been a pediatrician. I was healthy and lived a very normal childhood. [I had] two older brothers who let me follow them around to my heart’s content, and a mom and dad who spoiled us rotten with sporadic trips to the zoo and vacations to New York, and to California.

But when I started having headaches, and nose bleeds, and then a seizure, my parents became exceptionally conservative in whatever we were doing. Our vacations were trips to grandpa’s house, ten minutes away and soon trips to the zoo became consumed by doctor visits. I was diagnosed with my tumor at nine.

A tumor is a mass collection of clumped cells. They can form anywhere and they formed in my spinal cord. [/pullquote]

My tumor was a Glimos, and it’s one of the most common ones that form. The doctors extracted it a little later that year. There’s a pink scar now where it used to be. But my parents and I were happy I was healthy.

But the thing with tumors is that they can form again.

I had another tumor in my brain when I turned twelve. And it’s still there progressing slowly but steadily killing me.

It’s hard to be sixteen and when people see you they stare. They look at me and see a skinny body and a plump face. It’s not hard to see I’m not healthy. I look deformed. I feel weak, it’s hard to eat, hard to sleep, breathing is a chore.

For a long time, I was just waiting to die. When you hear “you can’t do that” or “you can only do this”, it really seems pointless. I have to take a series of medications. I lost all my friends when my family moved to Orlando, and my tumor was slowly growing, ready to consume me.

Earlier this year in February, I shaved my head to prepare for a new surgery. It was impossibly hard to do. Not many people see it that way, but the tumor had deformed my features. It had stopped me from living a life I wanted. My hair was always styled, curls, crimped, straightened, my hair was the one thing I had control of and the one part of me that seemed healthy and strong. And I shaved it all off to prepare for surgery. I felt naked and completely alone once my hair was gone. I did not feel normal at all.

After the surgery I still had a tumor, not as big but still there, residing comfortably in my head. I had very limited motivation to live at that point.

One day mom took me to a church. I can’t move around a lot. I tire easily so for the first couple of weeks, I sat alone. Kids would smile at me and then keep walking. I came home and cried nearly every time I went. Who would want to be friends with a girl with a brain tumor? Then one night the group leader asked me about why I was attending church. I didn’t know. I started to panic, and I began to cry. I wasn’t there for God. I wasn’t there for any reason. I was just there. I was going to die anyway, so what was the point?

But my leader told me, “Well you are still here, so that’s a point enough to live not just survive.”
Being a kid with cancer sucks. You have no control over anything. You’re lost and scared and feel broken. But after that day, I wanted to start living, and I did. I started volunteering and became more sociable. I joined groups of other teens with cancer. I wasn’t alone.

It’s hard being a teen, harder having cancer, but that’s what I have now. For some reason that I’m not sure of even, I’m okay. Because I know I’m not just trying to survive, I’m living too.