Growing Up With Cancer

cancerteenfemale

by Caitlin

It seems that as I grow and change, so do the issues that come with being a childhood cancer survivor. I was first diagnosed when I was eleven with an aggressive sarcoma tumor that had collapsed my right lung. The doctors gave me a forty percent survival rate.

My initial reaction was disbelief, followed by overwhelming anger. I knew nothing about cancer and I could not believe that I had it. Going onto the oncology floor for the first time was an eye opener. There were kids of every age, many bald. I suddenly realized that we were all in the same boat, forced to deal with something so difficult at such a young age. The only thing you could do was accept it and start fighting. So that’s what I did.

It was hard to learn to cope with such a drastic change in life. I went from soccer games and ponytails to blood counts and nausea. My family has always used humor to cope with most situations, and so laughter became a big part of my recovery. Other people do not understand how I can joke about losing my hair and vomiting but I didn’t have the energy to cry all the time. No matter how bad things get, if you can manage to laugh it is not nearly as bad as it could be.

When I started losing my hair, my older brother and sister wanted to take me to a salon to get it cut and freak out the stylist when it all started falling out. (Unfortunately my mom did not think it was as funny as we did.) My close friends now joke about my “funny cancer stories”. It didn’t take them long to accept my way of dealing with cancer and now they join in too. In fact, they are avid participants of “Cancerpoolza” a holiday my sister and I invented to commemorate the day I was diagnosed. We decided it would be much better to plan something crazy to do each year on that day instead of sitting around reminiscing.

Finishing treatment does not mean that you are cured. The first few years after are some of the hardest emotionally. It is as if you are living on borrowed time, holding your breath and praying that the worst does not happen. My doctors told me that since my tumor was so aggressive if it ever returned it would likely be untreatable.

About half a year after I had finished treatment, the doctors thought they saw something on one of my routine x-rays. It was the moment my parents and I had been dreading since I had finished treatment. After additional testing they were able to determine that it was just a false alarm. Even so I couldn’t sleep for the next three nights.

As if cancer is not enough to cope with, I also had to cope with friends and classmates. I had a few loyal friends who stuck by me, but the majority of school friends simply avoided calling me. I do not really blame them, though at the time I was pretty upset. I realize now how hard it was for them to deal with something like that. It was hard enough for me to understand and I was living it. Still, knowing that did not make it any easier to deal with having my classmates stare at me as if I had a third eye. One time a classmate fearfully asked me if cancer was contagious. I sneezed on her before telling her it wasn’t.

Every time I tell someone I had cancer, I get the same facial reaction. A sort of shocked-I-don’t-know-what-to-say look. Sometimes people are curious in a good way and soon understand that I am not about to keel over dead. A lot of times I get people who either treat me like I’m made of glass and should be handled carefully, or that look at me as if I just told them that I’m an alien space invader.

You have to learn to accept that many people simply don’t know how to react to something like that. All that you can do is try to make to make it clear that being a cancer survivor is part of who you are but not the only thing you are. After that it is up to them to accept it or not. It is not that I go around with a sign saying “cancer survivor”, but it does come up eventually with most people and it is always hard to deal with. Life isn’t scripted and a lot of times people say things they don’t really mean or that they don’t realize can hurt.

High school was easy because the majority of my classmates had grown up with me and been there during everything. My freshmen year of college was a shock. Suddenly the support system of friends and fellow cancer patients was scattered across the country. I was living with people who had no idea about my past and did not understand. The first few weeks were rough, but I soon found the confidence to be proud of who I was. If people were going to act weird when they found out I was a cancer survivor that was their problem. I found that if you are comfortable with yourself, other people will be too.

I have always been an optimistic person, but even now I still have moments when I feel completely overwhelmed. The aggressive nature of my tumor required an aggressive treatment plan. I had three months of chemo rounds, surgery, two stem cell transplants and radiation. My treatment lasted about a year. Life never seemed so impossible as it did the day I started my first chemo treatment and realized it would be at least a year before it would end—but it did, and now it’s been eight since I was diagnosed. I know how long the road can seem sometimes, and how it often feels like there is no way you can make it. But there is an end. Children survive everyday. They grow up, have lives, careers and families.

I have had moments when I felt like I would never stop feeling sick. Even when I was finished with treatment, there were still a lot of hard moments. Having to lose friends to the same disease, dealing with people who don’t understand, and trying to be a normal kid again when you’ve already had to grow up so much. In spite of all the negative aspects of having cancer, most of the time I feel almost lucky to have been through everything I have. I have met so many amazing people, done so many incredible things, and become a person I would not have been otherwise. I learned to appreciate each day I am alive, and to embrace every opportunity I receive. So in the end, I feel grateful for everything I have learned despite how hard it was to learn it.