Living Proof

It was a gloomy, cold fall day.

All this talk of cancer had taken a toll® on me. I was only eighteen years old, and should have been talking about college and boys, certainly not cancer.

I had to go see a surgeon, that gloomy, cold day, so we .could discuss my most recent X-rays and talk about having a biopsy®. I discovered a lump, about the size of a quarter, in the right side of my neck.

Mom, being mom, said it was probably just a swollen gland®. We went to a doctor who believed the lump was suspicious, and used words like "leukemia"® and" lymphoma"®. Yeah, sure, we thought, fat chance! He sent me for an X-ray, and gave me a referral® to see the surgeon.

Mom's car was being repaired that day, and the only other source of .transportation was my father's car. This was a sky blue station wagon, and Cartier Replica Watches the thing I remember most about it, was that it was quite large, and ugly!

My dad, being a junk collector, also had the back of the car decorated with all sorts of stuffed animals, which peeked® out all the windows. Being eighteen, I was more concerned about my friends seeing me in that car than anything else.

My mother is a small woman, all of five feet tall. Driving that car was quite a task for heir, but she had no other choice, as we had to get to the appointment . We made it there alive, but she was a bit uneasy about it.

As the surgeon placed my X-rays up on the wall for us to view, he said the words we dreaded. "It' s cancer, you have Hodgkin' s disease ." We had to schedule a biopsy as soon as possible, to find out which stage I was in.

As we walked out of the office and into the elevator, no words were spoken. We couldn't even look at each other. We were both just stunned and did not know what to say to one another.

We got into the sky blue clunker®, with dad' s fuzzy® friends, and mom proceeded to leave the parking lot. She wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings, but all of a sudden she slammed on the brakes and we both went forward. Outside of the car we saw a bicyclist, half on and half off his bike.” Where’d you get your license," he yelled, "from a cereal® box, woman? You almost killed me!"

The biker got back on his bike and drove off, just shaking his head. It was then that mom and I looked at each other. We cried, as we came to terms with the realization that I had cancer. We talked about it for hours, and I knew I had so much support and that I was going to be all right.

Twelve years later, at age thirty-one, cancer has now been put behind me. I had major surgery and 4 months of radiation therapy. Thank God, it was Cartier Tank Replica caught at an early stage, and I was able to make a full recovery.

Cancer changed me so much — so much for the better. It taught me to appreciate life and those in my life, and to never take anything for granted. Life is too short and you have to live each moment to the very fullest.

To this day, I wish I could find that man on the bike .I'd like to tell
him that he was not the only survivor to come out of that day, as I am living
proof.