My Choice
My lungs were screaming for air. Craning my neck, I could see the distant wall ahead of me. “Just a few more yards,” I thought to myself. Kicking harder, I glided smoothly to the surface of the pool and touched the wall. As wet, capped heads splashed above the water, Jake, my swim coach yelled, “C’mon, girls! My bowels can move faster than this!” We all laughed, as Jakes’ jokes were cherished swim team moments. “And Paige, you’d better not breathe on the next one”, he barked at me. Giving him a nervous smile, I took a big breath and pushed off the wall. Even with the grueling, two hour practices every single day, I have really grown to love the swim team. We’re two weeks into the season, and with high school starting tomorrow, I feel a lot more confident having so many friends.
“Oh, and girls!”, Jake yelled to us as we dripped to the locker room after practice, “don’t forget to get your physicals in so you can compete in meets!”
Making a mental note, I quickly dried off and threw on some sweats. Grabbing my backpack, I ran my wrinkled fingers through my blonde, chlorine-damaged hair. “Ready, Paige?” Delanie asked at me, car keys in hand. “Yep!” I replied, thinking how lucky I was to live just down the street from the captain of our swim team, thus earning me free rides to and from practice every day. After Delanie dropped me off, I ran inside for dinner. The sound of spaghetti wafted from the kitchen, making my mouth water. My mom and brother, Thomas were both in the kitchen, mom cooking, and Thomas, not surprisingly, sitting at the table waiting to be fed. “Hey mom”, I said, sliding into my seat next to Thomas. “Hi, honey.” I frowned. Her smile seemed a little forced, and she stayed permanently bent over the pasta bowl, facing away from me as if she was hiding something.
Then my dad walked in the door, distracting me from my pondering. But instead of his naturally booming and animated personality, my dad looked kind of depressed. “Guys, what’s wrong?” Thomas asked. I was wondering the same thing. My dad cleared his throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mom square her shoulders. I suddenly wasn’t hungry. As my parents came to join us at the table with the food forgotten in the kitchen, I held my breath, trying to imagine what could possibly cause my bubbly, loving parents to suddenly look so sad. What came out of my mother’s mouth was not what I expected.
“Paige, do you remember that X-ray you had last month?”
Then again, I didn’t have any idea what to expect.
Biting my lip, I tried to think back to late July, about four weeks ago. Swimming hadn’t started yet, and I was busy getting all of my gear in place and filling out forms to register for freshman year. I had also gone to the hospital for a brief, full-body X-ray. I’m pretty tall for 14, at five feet and ten inches, and the X-ray was just to check for scoliosis, or bending of the spine. Apparently, it’s common in tall, teenage girls.
“Oh my gosh,” I said rather dumbly. “I have scoliosis.”
“What? No, Paige,” my dad said. I looked at my mom. Her composure failing, tears brimmed at the corners of her eyes, ready to fall like waterfalls at the slightest movement.
“When the doctor took that X-ray, she found a mass in your right leg, just below the knee,” my dad continued on. “She wasn’t sure what it was, so she sent it to the lab to be tested.”
Not comprehending, I reached under the table and felt my leg. The skin was dry from chlorine and prickly from shaving last night, but it also felt strong and healthy. There was no mass, no bump, nothing out of the ordinary. I glanced at Thomas. Receiving nothing but an equally confused look, I returned my attention to my mom, who had rejoined the, so far, one-way conversation. And then she said the three words that would forever change my life.
“It’s bone cancer.”
Silence. There was dead, cold, unforgiving silence. I had no words. None. Thankfully, Thomas did.
“Cancer?”
“Yes,” whispered my mother. I stared blankly at her. My brain was not working. Something was definitely wrong. I was completely numb. Nothing made sense.
“Is she going to die?” Thomas’ voice wavered. Something about that break in his voice snapped me back into consciousness.
“No.” I said, in unison with my mother and father. My hands were shaking. I could not steady them. Taking a deep breath, I turned my attention to my parents.
“What’s the treatment plan?” My voice didn’t even sound like my own. It sounded far, far away, like some other girl, in some other home, with some other family.
My dad looked at the table. He couldn’t look me in the eye. “The recommended treatment plan is amputation, just below the knee.”
Well now I had a few things to say.
“That’s not happening.”
“Paige.” My mother put on her “mom voice.”
“There’s no way I’m letting anyone cut off my leg.”
“It’s the best choice,” my father reasoned.
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
My mom was getting frustrated. “Paige, if you had chemotherapy, the cancer could always come back. Or they might not get all of it. You’d be sick all the time. Your body would be put through hell, and your swimming career would be over. If you amputate, you’ll be cancer-free immediately. It’s the safest thing for all of us.”
That’s when I lost it. “ALL OF US? How can you talk about all of us when this is happening to me? ME! I’ll have to live with one leg, not you! This is my decision, no one else’s! If you think I would willingly become an amputee, you’d better adjust your expectations.”
My facing burning with anger, I ran up to my room. I could feel hot tears stinging the corners of my eyes. Flinging my now-cancerous body on top of my bed, I lay with my face buried in pillows, but I was shaking uncontrollably, and couldn’t breathe very well. Sitting up, I took several deep breaths and tried to decrease my level of hysteria. It wasn’t working. I held my leg tightly in both hands, as if someone was approaching me with a chainsaw that very moment.
Torrents of desperate questions flooded my mind. Would I die from this? What about swimming? What would my friends think? Could I really live with one leg? And perhaps most importantly, would I ever be the same again?
The next day, I wandered the hallways at school in a numb haze. I barely talked to my friends and didn’t pay much attention in class. I was relieved to go to swim practice after school because no one could see me cry in my goggles. And when I got home, my parents and brother were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for me, just like last night. I did my best to ignore them, but even being up in my room alone, I could just feel their presence downstairs. It made me antsy. Grumbling, I made my way to the kitchen. I guess I’d have to talk to them sooner or later.
My mom, dad and brother were all huddled around the table, having a hushed conversation. When they heard me come in, they turned around, my mom hastily wiping her eyes.
“Honey,” she whispered.
“Mom”, I whispered back. I suddenly felt like a little girl again. I missed when life was simple and fun, and the hardest decisions I had to make were whether or not to buy hot lunch at school. Taking a deep breath, I joined my family at the kitchen table, thinking, “Now I understand why Peter Pan never wanted to grow up.”
After a long talk about treatment plans and surgery, I lay in my bed that night, mind reeling. I still didn’t want an amputation. I just couldn’t imagine being the new, freshman girl who basically started high school with a prosthetic leg. But even more important was that this decision was for life. There were no do-overs, no false starts. Whatever option I chose, I would be stuck with. And that was maybe the scariest thing of all.
The next day while riding home from swim practice with Delanie, I decided I had to tell her. She was a senior and captain of the swim team. Surely she would have some advice for me.
I took a shaky breath. “Delanie.”
“Yeah.”
“I have to tell you …this thing. It’s important.”
“What’s up?”
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do this. Please don’t make me do this. “I have cancer.” My heart was beating so loud in my ears I nearly missed Delanie’s sharp intake of breath. She swerved over to the side of the road and put the car in park. I was afraid to say anything.
“Where it is?”
“In my leg.” Delanie looked pale. Maybe I made a mistake in telling her. She looked like she could pass out.
“Delanie.”
“No. Stop.” She closed her eyes and held her hand out to stop me. “Are you having chemo?”
“No, I-
I caught myself, suddenly realizing that I’d never said the words out loud. Never. This would be the first time. Much to my embarrassment, my eyes filled with tears. I had sworn to myself earlier that I wouldn’t cry.
“Paige?”
“Uh, no I-the recommended treatment plan is…
“What?”
I closed my eyes and tried not to think. I had to do this. I was strong enough. I was brave enough. I hoped. If I couldn’t even say the words, how could I go through the motions?
“The recommended treatment plan is amputation, just below the knee.” There it was. I could feel those harsh, unforgiving words slice through the cool September air like a butter knife. I had goose bumps on my arms and my hair was dripping, but the only thing that mattered was the words I had said. Except, they were more than just words. They were reality.
“Oh, Paige, no.” Delanie whispered. She sounded heartbroken. And something inside of me broke.
I bent over in the passenger seat of her Mustang, sobbing uncontrollably. She gathered me in her arms and we just sat there for a while holding onto each other, tethered on the tip of a dangerous mountain. And I could feel myself slipping over the edge.
“I can’t do it”, I sobbed into her varsity jacket. Delanie stroked my wet, tangled hair.
“Paige, you can do this. I know it.”
“No, no I can’t! I can’t live like that!”
“Lot’s of people live without a limb, Paige. It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t know if I can be happy living that way!”
“Paige, happiness doesn’t depend on who you are or what you have. It only matters what you think.”
I looked up at her, my hopeless tears running down my desperate cheeks. “How do you know that?”
She smiled, and that’s when I noticed she also had tears in her eyes. “I just know.”
“People will stare at me if I have one leg.”
“Make it worth their while.”
ONE MONTH LATER
I nervously fingered the pastel hospital sheets as the doctor wheeled me closer and closer to the operating room. My mom was walking with me, her clammy hand on my shoulder. My dad and brother followed anxiously behind the throng of surgeons and nurses escorting me to surgery. When we came to those scary, imposing double doors that marked the end of our journey together, my mom gave me a warm hug.
“I’m so honored to have you as my daughter”, she told me, tears brimming in her eyes. “I love you.”
The surgeon pushed the bed through the double doors, and she was gone.
As our little procession moved down the hallway, Dr. Hunt chuckled. “That’s quite a leg” he nodded towards me.
I glanced down, smiling at the colors and names written across my skin. “My whole swim team signed my leg when I told them it was being amputated”, I explained to him.
“That’s a remarkable swim team you have there”, he said. I grinned. Remarkable indeed.
“Well, we’re here,” Dr. Hunt said, jerking me out of my thoughts. “Are you nervous?”
“Nah”, I joked with him. “I’ve only seen, like, every episode of Grey’s Anatomy.” Dr. Hunt laughed. A big, booming laugh that was loud in my ears. “Alright then,” he said. “Lets get started.”
When Dr. Hunt spoke, a jolt of sensation rushed through my body like an electric current. But it wasn’t fear, or regret, or resentment. No. It was clarity. The truth was staring at me in the face. I felt so free. And I had never felt so sure of any decision in my entire life.
A month ago, my mother said three words that changed me forever. What I didn’t see then, was that those three words are the most valuable gift I will ever receive. They have taught me that every second on this Earth is a gift. They have taught me that more often than not, the thing you’re the most afraid of is the only thing that will set you free. I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons, and even if I don’t have the power to chose where I come from, I can still choose where I go from here. And in the face of despair, of overwhelming odds, and of uncertainty, I chose happiness. I choose love, and hope and sunsets, and butterflies and kisses in the rain. That’s what those three words taught me.
A nurse placed a mask over my nose and throat. As my eyes drifted close, I finally felt at peace for the first time since my mother spoke those pivotal words. Not because I was going to die, but because-
I choose life,” I murmured just before the blissful clouds of anesthesia drew me in.
I know that scrub nurse heard me.