"Family is not an important thing. It's everything." ~ Michael J. Fox
What's the worst disease you can think of? For me, it's cancer. Almost any cell in your body can become cancerous and cancer can affect anyone. Sure, there are groups of people that are more likely to get certain types and there are things you can do that can increase your chances of developing cancer. But in the end, it could happen to anyone. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 1 million people in the United States get cancer each year. Relay for Life, as a part of the ACS, helps raise money to fight cancer and most importantly, to find a cure for it. Who do you Relay for? It's a simple question but often receives a complicated answer. My answer? I Relay for my family. My maternal grandfather died of colon cancer before I was born right after my mom finished college so I never got the chance to meet him. My uncle was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004 but fought it and went into remission for a few years. After that life was pretty normal until my junior year of high school. In a span of 4 months, my dad's sister, Aunt Brigid, was diagnosed with terminal metastatic melanoma in her brain, my father was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma, and then my aunt passed away from her cancer.
What's the worst disease you can think of? For me, it's cancer. Almost any cell in your body can become cancerous and cancer can affect anyone. Sure, there are groups of people that are more likely to get certain types and there are things you can do that can increase your chances of developing cancer. But in the end, it could happen to anyone. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 1 million people in the United States get cancer each year. Relay for Life, as a part of the ACS, helps raise money to fight cancer and most importantly, to find a cure for it. Who do you Relay for? It's a simple question but often receives a complicated answer. My answer? I Relay for my family. My maternal grandfather died of colon cancer before I was born right after my mom finished college so I never got the chance to meet him. My uncle was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004 but fought it and went into remission for a few years. After that life was pretty normal until my junior year of high school. In a span of 4 months, my dad's sister, Aunt Brigid, was diagnosed with terminal metastatic melanoma in her brain, my father was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma, and then my aunt passed away from her cancer.
Those four months from January to
April have blurred together and sometimes it's hard to remember exactly when
everything happened. Dad was diagnosed at the end of February/ early
March and underwent his first craniotomy soon afterwards. Next, he
started radiation and we went up to Baltimore for Aunt Brigid's wake. A few
months later he moved on to chemotherapy. As a kid it's always hard when your
parent is sick. It's a role reversal, you have to take care of them and try to help
them feel better. Chemo extends that sickness for a whole year. It's
hard to explain what it's like watching someone swell from steroids and
radiation and then slowly waste away on chemo. It's a strange experience.
The good news was that Dad responded
well to the chemo treatments and the tumor stopped growing. He finished his
last round a few weeks before I graduated high school so we had a double
graduation party for the both of us. We were told that people who responded as
well as Dad did usually lived another 10 years. This was great news to me. It
meant that he would be there for my sister's high school graduation in 2 years
and for both of our college graduations and maybe even weddings. Even though he
was finished with chemo he still had to get PET scans every few months and send
them down to his doctors at Duke. I went off to college and things and
things seemed to return to normal until October of my first year at UVa. The
latest PET scans showed that the tumor had started growing again and Dad had to
have another craniotomy. After the surgery, we weren't sure if he would have to
start a new round of chemo again or if there was a new plan of action.
I came home for winter break on
Friday December 17. Things seemed to be pretty normal, my parents had just
gotten back from a doctor's appointment at Duke and my sister was excited that
she was almost on winter break. On Saturday I when I woke up, my mom told my
sister and I she had something to tell us. As I walked through the
kitchen to get to the living room I saw it. Sitting on the counter was a
pamphlet for Home Hospice Care. I knew that whatever news we were about to hear
wasn't good. My mom has been a nurse my whole life and I knew that hospice is
end of life care. My parents sat us down
and told us that the doctors at Duke had told them that more chemo wasn't going
to help and there was nothing more they could do. My dad had about 6-8 weeks
left. I was in shock. 6-8 weeks was not enough time. I would
be back at school without a car. How would I get back home if I needed to? We
started talking about a plan and my mom told us the hospice nurse was coming
later that afternoon. That night we had trouble getting my dad up the
stairs to his bed. He was very sore and it was hard for him to walk. My mom
thought the soreness was from the car ride to Duke so we made up the pull out
couch for my dad to sleep on. By the next day, things had escalated. The
nurse was back and she told us that the pain was probably from the tumor
growing and spreading, wrapping around his spinal cord. My sister and I were
upstairs wrapping Christmas presents when my mom told us that my dad's family
was coming down and would be there later in the evening. All of them. We have a
pretty big family, my dad was one of 8, and if all of them were coming on short
notice, it was a big deal. It looked like my dad now only had about a
week. By the next morning things got even worse, the timeline had now
shortened to a few hours. We started saying our goodbyes that afternoon and
Tuesday morning around 3am, during the lunar eclipse, my dad finally passed
away.
I
came home for Christmas thinking things were pretty normal. Maybe Dad would
have to go back on chemo but he had been there and done that so we could handle
it. Instead, I came home on a Friday and had lost my dad by Tuesday morning. I
was totally unprepared. We were supposed to have 10 more years.
Last year Uncle Peter’s leukemia came back worse than ever. He went through trial treatments at the NIH but it was decided that the best way to treat it was with a bone marrow transplant. My other uncles were tested and one was a full match and the other two were half matches. Then, a week before the transplant Uncle Jimmy went to have one last check on his bone marrow to make sure everything was ok. He found out a few days later that he was no longer a candidate for donation because they found a slow growing lymphoma in his scans. He couldn’t help his younger brother. The transplant had to be delayed so that the doctors could decide which of my other uncles would be the new donors. During this time, Uncle Peter’s condition continued to worsen and finally passed away in early October.
Now I Relay to make sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else. I Relay so that no one else thinks they have beaten the disease only to find out a few months later that it's back, has metastasized, and is now terminal. So that no one else comes home after their first semester of college and loses a parent. So that no other families lose three siblings in five years. I Relay so that no other family has to go through what my family went through. So my question for you is this: Why do you Relay?
Last year Uncle Peter’s leukemia came back worse than ever. He went through trial treatments at the NIH but it was decided that the best way to treat it was with a bone marrow transplant. My other uncles were tested and one was a full match and the other two were half matches. Then, a week before the transplant Uncle Jimmy went to have one last check on his bone marrow to make sure everything was ok. He found out a few days later that he was no longer a candidate for donation because they found a slow growing lymphoma in his scans. He couldn’t help his younger brother. The transplant had to be delayed so that the doctors could decide which of my other uncles would be the new donors. During this time, Uncle Peter’s condition continued to worsen and finally passed away in early October.
Now I Relay to make sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else. I Relay so that no one else thinks they have beaten the disease only to find out a few months later that it's back, has metastasized, and is now terminal. So that no one else comes home after their first semester of college and loses a parent. So that no other families lose three siblings in five years. I Relay so that no other family has to go through what my family went through. So my question for you is this: Why do you Relay?
With Relaylove,
Publicity Committee
