Inner Beauty

Chapter One

Introduction:

As you probably already know, most stories begin with the smell of scrambled eggs and toast, and the sound of birds chirping at the window. As the sun rises and the earth breathes in the morning air, you are surrounded by the thoughts and feelings of the story-teller. That is how most stereotypical, ordinary adventures are brought into this world.

My adventure, just for the record, will not be one of those stories. So to completely separate my journey from the rest, I've decided to switch things up a bit.

Chapter One:

I fell asleep to the sound of rain splashing against the window. Sometimes it would be a soft whisper of a pitter-patter, and other times it would sound as if the apartment below us was spraying our window with their hose. Our apartment was on the second floor, number four hundred, two doors away from the stairs. It was a small apartment for a family of four, well if you counted our dog, Simba, we were technically a family of five. We had a sometimes-working-but-fully-equipped kitchen, a common area, one bathroom, and two bedrooms. The walls in our kitchen were the color of the sun and the cabinets were a baby blue. Our kitchen table had five chairs, and, in case you were wondering, the extra chair was not for Simba.

You see, my mother, Angela Grace Clemons, was diagnosed with a stage four brain tumor about three years ago. The doctors told us it was malignant or cancerous and that she would have at least a year to live. Their statistics said that around four out of ten adults diagnosed lived for at least a year. Unfortunately my mother wasn't in that forty percent. As it turned out my mother had a grade four- glioblastoma multiforme(GBM) otherwise known as the most quickly growing astrocytomas. The doctors' statistics for what my mother had basically said that most people lived for less than a year.

I bet I'm killing you with all this cancer talk and the depressing story of how a girl lost her mother, but in truth that was basically how my summer before ninth grade turned out. For those of you who are probably reading this thinking, "What the heck is this girl talking about," let me put my mother's cancer story into layman's terms. Well, I say "my mother's cancer story" but in truth it was more of our family's cancer story. It came in like a wave in the ocean, and dragged us all out to sea.

When I say my mother's tumor was malignant that means that it was fast growing, likely to come back after surgery, even if completely removed. It had a high likelihood of spreading to other parts of her brain or spinal cord, and couldn't just be treated with surgery. Radiotherapy or chemotherapy is often used to try to stop the tumor from returning. An astrocytoma is a type of brain tumor. It is the most common type of brain tumor in adults. A grade four astrocytoma is called a glioblastoma multiforme or a GBM. You are also probably wondering why I keep on referring to my mother's brain cancer as a stage four or a grade four. This is because brain cancer or brain tumors are put into groups according to how quickly they are likely to grow. There are four groups ranging for one to four. You can probably already see where this is going. Stage one means that if the cancer grows at all it will be very slowly, and stage four means that the cancer will grow very quickly and will likely result in the death of it's victim.

My last day of eighth grade was on May 23rd. The next day, May 24th, was suppose to be the beginning of a well deserved break full of pool parties, Popsicles, and long, hot summer days. Instead it included an ambulance, cafeteria food, and night spent in a hospital waiting room. Most people think that was the day my mother first found out she had a brain tumor, but I dare to think otherwise. For several months before, my mother seemed to be in a lot of pain. She took lots of Advil for her "headaches" and went to bed early and woke up late. Around the beginning of May my father suggested to my mother that he should take her to the doctor. My mother, being my mother, refused. She was the type of person that never complained and always tried to "tough it out." As the end of the school year approached my mother's headaches and fatigue worsened. Then on the first day of summer my mother had a seizure.