What is Cancer?

What is Cancer? For many who have never experienced it themselves personally, I give you this scenario: Imagine you are driving a car along a mountainside road and completely out of nowhere a large boulder falls directly into your path causing you to stop, bringing your trip to a screeching halt. You watch as the giant ball of earth then passes right in front you and falls off the cliff and you decide you are safe and start to take a breath. Having had what felt like the end nearly roll right past you, your eyes now turn to the mountain and see the rest of its peak start to crumble and tumble down in your direction. You are now stuck in its path and have to endure its wrath while you bear down and prepare the best you can. How long will it fall on you? Will it ever stop? You may never know. If so, will you ever feel safe driving again? For many who have ever had cancer, this is what it feels like.

Let me explain, in this situation you are the car. While driving along this path we call life, cancer can come at us out of nowhere. Sometimes there are warning signs that allow us to prepare for its diagnosis, sometimes there are not. After cancer has been treated and you are free of it and the boulder has fallen off of its cliff in front of you, there may be post-cancer complications and side effects that you may have to prepare for. This is the rest of the landslide that can continue to fall on you. May it be multiple small pebbles or even larger rocks depending on your personal situation, this landslide can rain on you for the rest of your life. Due to the psychological and/or physical trauma you have undergone to get rid of your cancer, or the treatment you are still on to handle the side effects it may have caused you, sometimes you feel you can never feel safe again. Some people may live their lives in fear, always dreading for another boulder to fall in their direction. For everyone, their new life path road will be different.

For my mom and I, it was a little bit different. When I was just 5, I saw my mother take on her own boulder, Breast Cancer. After having a double mastectomy to ensure her cancer had the least possible chance of ever returning, she had chemo and radiation to wipe out its possible tumor remnants. Having had radiation directly on her chest, her lungs quickly became affected creating what looked like spider web-like scars in her pulmonary area which made her breathing inevitably dwindle over the years and eventually lead to lung failure and wiping her out entirely in late 2018. Over her treatment, my family and I watched as she lost her hair due to chemo, but she stayed strong and endured everything she had to go through. My mother was already a strong woman, but I’d like to think this life-detour truly made her a warrior.

As for myself, at the age 10 I soon became entangled in my own battle against cancer, Brain Cancer that is. For me a year prior to my diagnosis, I had been diagnosed with a rare disorder called Diabetes Insipidus which is practically like actual diabetes though it deals with the balance of sodium in your body. This meant that for a year I would constantly feel thirsty and would need to use the bathroom often. Unknowingly, this was the first sign something was wrong. Months after my original diagnosis of DI, on my tenth birthday my voice almost immediately became deep, and I started to feel the side effects of early puberty. Two short months later I began to experience excruciating headaches and migraines as well as dwindling sight in my left eye. After spending a month in the hospital with what seemed like no answer in sight, doctors gave my family and I the news: it was Brain Cancer. To be more precise, there was a tumor on my pituitary, the central part of your brain which controls the release of all the needed hormones in your body, and what some doctors call the “master gland.” This helped explain why I had been experiencing precocious puberty and extreme headaches as well as my sight being compromised as it was pushing on my optic nerve.

Very quickly, doctors suggested I receive brain surgery in order for them to biopsy the tumor to find out just what kind of tissue it was composed of. Unfortunately they came up empty-handed and were not able to reach the actual tumor, so they made an educated guess that I had a Germ Cell tumor and decided that I be treated with chemo and radiation like my mother had just 5 short years before me. I lost my hair, and had to stay in the hospital in rounds of treatment which sometimes lasted weeks at a time. After my chemo, I had outpatient radiation a few times a week for the next couple months. As a result of where the tumor was. I now take artificial growth hormone and testosterone because I cannot produce my own. Everyday I deal with chronic stomach issues and am now on medications which control my adrenal, and thyroid hormones, but I feel as if that is a small price to pay to keep on living. Some people don’t even get that chance and lose to the unstoppable avalanche falling upon them. 

Thanks to my cancer and the chemo treatment I received, I might never be able to have my own children, and sometimes when I feel sick or get headaches I can’t stop myself from fearing that my cancer may have returned or that I may be experiencing something just as bad as before. I call myself a hypochondriac, but only for good reason of course. Though I may dwell on the past and what I’ve lost due to cancer, I instantly have to turn my attention to what I’ve gained from it all; a supporting family, a more humble outlook on life, and a funnier, yet darker sense of humor. Because I know what it all feels like, I like to try and educate those around me, and maybe even help those who are personally going through it themselves. If you are a cancer survivor, somebody currently undergoing treatment, or are just someone feeling uncertain about what will happen down the road, I leave you with this word of advice: Nobody knows what the future holds, so sometimes you have to stop looking in the rear view mirror, keep your head up, and just try to enjoy the drive ahead of you!