A Taste of Victory

When I decided to volunteer for the Canadian Cancer Society, I was told that 2 out of every 5 people will in their lifetime be diagnosed with cancer. This was a shock to me. I didn't want to believe that in my community of 10,000 people nearly half of the population have had cancer, has cancer now, or will be diagnosed with cancer at some point. With such a bold statistic based on numbers derived from medical and university studies, it's hard to deny the truth in it, but still I didn't want to believe it because I live here in Prince Rupert and if cancer was really that prevalent then wouldn't I be more aware of those who have had it or do have it?

I am a cancer survivor. I know what experiences I've had with cancer and in thinking that more people have had to endure the same thing brought an incredibly overwhelming sadness to me. It brought sadness, but I was glad that the Canadian Cancer Society was and still is in the community visibly doing something proactive to help lower this statistic if not eradicate it completely. I wondered why being a survivor myself, I wasn't privy to knowing more people who have had cancer or has cancer now, but looking back at my battle with the disease and how I felt when I finished my chemotherapy, I guess it's not a shock after all.

I was 14 years old when I was diagnosed with cancer. I bumped my arm against my friends van door after a play rehearsal one evening and a week later my arm swelled up to the size of a grapefruit. When I went to go see my doctor, he thought it was just internal bleeding that had gotten infected, but for some reason I was unresponsive to the antibiotics he prescribed so he referred me to see a paediatrician in the town over. After seeing the paediatrician I was sent home on a good note with another prescription for some more antibiotics, but when I got home things turned for the worst.

My sister was on the phone speaking to someone when my mother, father and I walked through the front door. When she saw us she held the phone out to my mother saying "It's the doctor from Terrace." She handed the phone to my mother and quickly went to her room shutting the door without saying a word to me or my father. I didn't know what was wrong but I knew things were off kilter and soon I would witness one of the scariest things a child could witness: their mother collapsing from shock and fear. I guess that's when the paediatrician told her what she suspected and at that moment I realized that I could hear my sister crying in her room. The whole time, even though I knew something horrible was happening, my family stayed strong for me and didn't give me the opportunity to worry. I didn't even know we were leaving for Vancouver the next day until we were on the ferry heading for the airport.

When my mother and I arrived in Vancouver, I was immediately taken to BC Children's Hospital and not even an hour later I was being sedated and prepared for a bone marrow biopsy. When the sedation wore off I woke up with a hip so sore that I couldn't lie on my back properly and with my mother sitting beside my bed. That night I ate dinner with my mother watching me in a strange hospital room without a clue as to why I was there. I was beginning to get anxious, and as if the doctor could read my mind, he made his entrance.

The doctor sat down with me and my mother and began explaining the reason why I was there. He told me that my biopsy result had come and unfortunately it showed that I had 98% blast cells in my bone marrow. What this meant was that somewhere down the line I developed Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). He told me that my prospect of survival was very high and that Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia was as curable as pneumonia. He never once used the term cancer. That night I began chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy is one of the worst things that you could ever experience in your life. To save you from a killer disease, they have to inject you with poison to eliminate your cancer cells along with your normal cells. My treatment was an experimental study that my mother and I agreed to. We didn't know that by doing so treatment would be ten times more difficult because the study would extend my period in intensive chemotherapy to a year and increase the dosages of medication that I was given. Furthermore, after a year of intensive chemotherapy, the study required two additional years of less intensive chemotherapy called the maintenance phase. I don't know if we would have chosen differently in retrospect, but I guess in all fairness, I owe my survival to this treatment study just as much as I owe it to the doctors and nurses.

Chemotherapy was hard. I lost my hair, gained a lot of weight, experienced extreme nausea to the point where vomiting was the only option, and had recurring insomnia. I was pushed in a wheelchair because I had no energy to walk, was forced to be isolated because the common cold was sometimes life threatening to me, and missed one of the most important years of my adolescence. As if that wasn't enough I also was the first patient to suffer stroke like symptoms in reaction to some chemotherapy medication with an uncertain prognosis of whether I would be able to walk or speak again. The only thing that drove me was the fact that I never once was given any reason to believe that I would lose the battle. In my head and with every fiber of my being I knew I had already won. So I guess if anything, the trials of chemotherapy strengthened my humanity and gave me a thirst for life that I don't think I would have had otherwise.

Yes chemotherapy was hard, yes I did survive through it, and yes it forever shaped me as the person I am today, but in complete honesty things probably would have turned out differently had my mother not been there to be my caretaker. She was the rock that I continually leaned on for support and I'm forever grateful for that. I remember nights I would sit awake troubled by insomnia because of the chemo they gave me that day, envious of the sleep my mother was getting. Looking back now, I wonder how many sleepless nights my mother suffered through, anxious over watching her child go through so much that sleep became a foreign language to her. I remember times I hugged toilets expelling bile and acid from my empty stomach all the while thinking how lucky my mother was for not having to feel what being poisoned felt like. In reality, my mother probably felt just as horrible if not worse because there was nothing she could do to keep me from being sick and that helplessness kept her from her motherly duty to protect me from pain. Only in adulthood have I been able to consider all these things she had to endure during that rough patch in our lives and only now can I truly and genuinely thank her.

Caretakers are such vital pieces to the tapestry of cancer treament. If we visualized treament in terms of chess, the ones going through treatment may be the king, but the caretakers are the queen. They are the ones who hold all the muscle the king would ever need to feel safe, protected and hopeful of victory. My mother was my queen. She was my strength when I needed it. She pushed my wheelchair, let me use her as a crutch, and even bathed me when I couldn't do it myself. She was so in tune with my feelings both physically and emotionally that all it took was one twitch of my nose or a certain type of blink to let her know I was about to get sick. She knew even before I did. She sacrificed her way of life to accommodate me because she knew that I had no choice but to sacrifice mine. She never complained or let me feel the effects of all the sacrifices she made. She was everything I needed in a caretaker and I believe she fought just as much of a battle as I did.

It's been eight years now since I finished my chemotherapy. I've passed the five year mark and I've decided that I would use my experience of surviving to pay it forward. So why does my story have any relevance to the high statistic I mentioned earlier, and my lack of knowing others who had to go through the same things I did? Because I know that there are survivors out there that have a lot of reservation in letting people know about their battle with cancer. In fact, I was that way for four years after my chemotherapy. I used to keep it a secret because I felt that if I let anyone know, it would change how they viewed me as person. I felt that I would be pitied and I didn't want that, I didn't deserve that. But a friend of mine in university put everything into perspective for me. She told me that if there was any change in how I was viewed at all, it would be with a new found respect and admiration for having the strength to go through what I went through. Since then, I have never had a problem divulging this story to anyone who has the time and is willing to listen. Maybe, by hearing my story I can inspire them to be the allies needed to win the battle against cancer.

So what keeps me fighting? Why do I want to pay it forward? Because I know what I went through and I'd like to do everything I can to help decrease the number of people who will experience the same thing I did. Because I don't want any more children to have to spend their birthday in an isolated hospital room away from those who would give the world to spend it with them. Because I hate the idea that some high school student somewhere is possibly missing their prom because they need chemotherapy. Because I have a story that I want to share with anyone who will listen and hopefully they will share it with someone else and those people will share it with someone else and everyone who hears it will feel empowered to achieve the great things that we are all capable of achieving. I do so because it's the least I could do to show my mother that the battle we won against cancer is contributing towards more battles being won every day. These are my reasons and I could probably think of a hundred more.

I hope I've encouraged other survivors, caretakers and also those who are currently battling this disease not to be afraid to tell your story. Make people aware that cancer doesn't just exist in faraway places where it can't touch them. It exists here and it exists there and it could even exist next door. It may well be one of the hardest things you will ever have to do, but guaranteed your story will inspire anybody who hears it. Let them know that cancer has a weakness and it lies in the strength we possess to endure, celebrate and preserve life. We survived cancer, we can survive anything! That's our potential as the human race. Let people know, they'll be thankful you did. Give them a reason to fight with you.