My Ongoing Cancer Story

Part 6

The few days of freedom went by fast for me. On Saturday, my parents had taken all of us to the beach. The sun was shining brightly, and the sand was so soft. I was self conscious about my body, what if people wondered why there was a bump under my chest where my catheter is? I quickly shook that thought off, who cares? I was going back to the hospital tomorrow anyways, it's time for me to pretend I didn't have cancer for a day, and to just have fun. I slowly walked to the ocean, and let the tide wash over my toes. My twin brother walked over, and put his arm around me. Together we stood there for a good 2 minutes, just soaking in all the sun, and letting the sand run over our toes while the ocean tickled us with water. At that moment, everything was so perfect. I forgot about what was going to happen the next day. On that day, I was just a normal kid again. And it felt so good to be normal.

The next morning, my mom walked into Liam and I's room, she sat on my bed and gently told me that we had to go back to the hospital for chemo. I groaned, why did this happen to me? The ride to Children's was awfully quiet like always, I was dreading the moment they had to access my catheter.

We got walked into the room where I was going to spend the next few days in. After I changed into a hospital gown, they started the usual process of pre chemo meds, and the catheter access. This time, they put some numbing cream on the catheter area. It still hurt like hell when they accessed it, but it definitely wasn't as bad as last time. Chemotherapy went smoothly, I had slept through most of it. The night after chemo was hard. I spent most of the night throwing up everything into the toilet. Both of my parents were sitting by me, rubbing my back, and wrapping blankets around my cold body. When I had threw up everything and started shaking, my dad carried me back into the bed. I clung onto his warm shoulders, and put my face into his shirt. Life sucked, but it couldn't get any worse right??

Turns out, I was very wrong about that. The next morning, I woke up and sat up in the hospital bed. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to get rid of my bed hair. Then I looked down. There was hair in my hands. Horrified, I ran into the bathroom where I spent most of the night. I looked into the mirror, I looked pale and fragile, and worst of all, there were bald patches in my hair. That was when I broke down crying, I don't want to lose my hair. My hair was a part of me. It identified me, and now I was about to lose all of it.

My parents had been watching the entire thing. I decided I didn't want to see it fall out anymore. I asked them if they could shave off all my hair. Being bald would be kind of cool, I had always wondered what a smooth head felt like. That afternoon in the hospital room, I sat in a chair, and silently cried as my dad shaved off my hair. I knew that once this was over, everyone would know that I had cancer. It was like I had cancer stamped to my forehead, like I had the word "weak" stamped onto my head. I wasn't ready for all the stares, all the looks of pity strangers would give me. But no one can be ready for cancer. The future looked uncertain, but one thing for sure, I was going to KICK CANCER'S ASS!