A Month To Live

A Month To Live (1)

Cancer.

The one word no-one wanted to hear when they entered a hospital - especially when it's directed at them. And guess what? It had been directed at me earlier today. One word that I could use to describe this? Typical. I thought bad luck wasn't supposed to exist - I now know that it does. I mean... I didn't consider myself an unlucky person - until now - but when looking back at the events of my life I do indeed seem to have so much more bad luck than others.

This simply proves my point.

Raegan, you've got cancer.

The words that kept bouncing around in my head like a ping-pong ball. I didn't know why I was thinking the same sentence over and over again... it wasn't exactly going to change anything. I guess I was still trying to get it to sink in. It definitely hadn't yet. I was just sort of going with it.

I was laying down in my bed, numb from the events of the day and staring up at the ceiling. It had a couple of those glow in the dark stickers in one corner, two little stars a mix between neon green and yellow when it was dark. They were there from the previous owners and I'd never really had the heart to take them down.

When I went in to the hospital with my mom, because of the regular headaches I'd been having, I was only expecting to be given some pills and sent on my way. I was given pills - not the ones I expected though. They took me for a some scans as they had concerns and a few days later, I was told that I had a tumour in my brain. A big tumour. Inoperable and deadly.

Funny, you think your mind is your final retreat from the outside world, your head a safe space, a cocoon cocoon comfort. Apparently mine was trying to kill me. I had no safe space anymore.

I never would have guessed that my irritating headaches could mean cancer. See? Still sinking in. It had only been a few hours since I found out, though, so I guess that's normal. I wonder how people were supposed to react in these situations. Was I doing it wrong? I'm pretty sure I was doing it wrong.

We asked if it was curable - of course we asked if it was curable, the fatalness of the tumour had to be the first question asked. The doctor's answer was in the negative category. He said it was too big and the best I had was... a month to six weeks left. D'you know what my reaction to that was?

I laughed.

They should have found it sooner they said. But how? The doctor said that unless I'd had regular brain scans which no-one did, it would be easy for it to go unnoticed. Slide under the radar until it was too late to do anything about it. Maybe there was never a chance to do anything about it.

The headaches had been happening for a good few months now but I'd assumed it was down to stress or something. Senior year, studying for finals, applying for college, all that trying to figure out what to do with your life kind of shit. I thought it was hereditary - my dad often had headaches when he got stressed. He had some real bad migraines a couple times a year where he could barely even leave his room for days on end until they passed.

I thought it was just that. I wish it were just that.

I let out a sigh and rolled over on my bed, pressing my face into the cold side of the pillow yet finding no comfort there either.

I suppose I was trying to find someone to blame, if it was someone else's fault then it would be easier to handle. Easier to direct your emotions at someone else and block out reality.

My mom rang my dad as soon as we found out and there were lots of tears, copious amounts... but not from me. I think I was still too shocked to cry, still am. I'm not exactly a huge crier anyway and besides... what does crying accomplish? Nothing. A waste of water. It's just a stupid way for humans to show that they're upset. I wasn't really an open book in that sense.