Cancer is a word that we all know. Cancer has impacted everyone’s life in some way or another. Cancer is the cause of the worst time in my life, the hardest time of my life. It has the power to rip apart the seams of our very lives in an instant.

I like to think that I had been a normal kid. I always fit in, I laughed, I played, I acted like other children. I couldn’t have been happier. I had a wonderful family. My older sister was preparing for a whole new life at college far away from home. My brother was well on his way through highschool, and both my parents had jobs. Then there was me, the innocent child.

The summer before my fifth grade year, it happened. I had just spent a long week at my best friend’s house, and his father drove me home. Thick smoke settled in my lungs from a freshly lit Marlboro. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was acting strange. He knew something I didn’t, something terrifying. I arrived at my house and was summoned into our living room. Both of my parents were sitting there with the most serious faces I’ve ever witnessed. Thoughts ran through my head about what I could have possibly done to get yelled at, which I was sure was about to happen.

But no, there was no yelling. A bomb was dropped into my young mind instead. “Devin, your mother has cancer.” I felt the tears stinging at my cheeks. Cancer? How could this have happened? Things like this don’t happen to people like us. I searched and searched, but I could find no answer as to why my family was being punished in such a harsh way.
The next year or so, I hardly saw my mother. She was undergoing testing and treatments at the University of Michigan Hospital. The next year or so, I hardly saw my father. He was either working or up in Michigan with my mother. My sister was in college. My brother chose to isolate himself from the rest of us. I was alone. I was by myself, lost in a big world. Nothing made sense to me anymore. My life had been ravaged in the course of a few short months.

Testing was a daily occurrence for her because they knew that she had cancer of the kidneys, but there were still dozens of symptoms that couldn’t be explained by just that illness. Weeks passed with no answers. My mother was an enigma to these medical professionals. Then one night, her entire life was changed, even more so than before.

She had been given sleeping medication that night, and nurses put out a clear sign that was to keep rounds from being made in that room unless it was an emergency. One “doctor” blatantly ignored all of this and the fact that she was alone at the time. He shook her awake. In the middle of the night, this man had the nerve to tell my mother that she had terminal bone cancer and to put her affairs in order because she had six months at the most left. Upon hearing this, the news that she would never see her daughter graduate college, see her sons graduate highschool, watch her daughter walk down the aisle, or get to hold her first grandchild, she had a normal human reaction: she cried. This must have seemed totally alien to the man. He looked at her, puzzled, and asked if she was on any antidepressants. The next day, she found her dosage quadrupled like some sort of sick joke.

I don’t believe I know what it’s like to truly hate anything, but the feelings I hold for this man must be close. My mother, one of the strongest individuals I know, is now almost five years cancer free. Through months of transfusions, infusions, chemo, and a partial nephrectomy, she somehow did the impossible and fully recovered from a terminal cancer. She managed to turn six months into five years. She serves as a constant reminder for me to never give up, to never back down.