I remember the day I faced my worst fear…
again. It was a day like none other. I
could feel it in my shoulders as I walked into this jungle of a hospital for
the first time. It was around 7 in the
morning. I thought I was just here for a
checkup but it became so much more than that.
I was waiting in the waiting room to be registered when my nose began to
bleed. This scared me. This made me feel like my cancer was back for
some reason. Eventually my nose stopped
bleeding and I finally registered. I
remember talking to the lady that registered me. I asked her if she saw a lot of 18 year olds
in this place. Unfortunately she said
yes. After I left registration, I went
to get my blood checked. This didn’t take
too long, maybe 5 minutes. After that I
was waiting in the waiting room for my doctor to call me in. He finally did. I remember sitting on the examination table
while my parents were sitting in guest chairs against the wall. My doctor came in. He asked me my medical history. I told him.
Then the part that I wish would have never happened. He turned on the computer and looked at my
blood results. He saw my white blood cell
counts had spiked to 35, well above the normal range. He casually told me and my parents that he
believed that the cancer was back. In
the same breath, he started discussing my treatment. It very well may have been this moment when I
knew I was at the best cancer hospital in the world. He tells us that he wants me to get on this
clinical trial with promising results but says that the trial was at
its maximum limit of 90 patients. He
then asks us to wait and he leaves the room.
He leaves us alone for a little more than an hour. This whole time I feel the tension in my
shoulders building. Tenser and tenser
they get. I am at the point where I want
to throw up when my doctor walks in again.
He says that patient 90 dropped out of the trial and the spot was mine …
There is more to this story but I would prefer to
take a break and write the rest later.
These are not memories I want to relive all at once.
