Cancer has impacted my life. Throughout my childhood, I didn’t know what cancer was nor did I understand what it did, until it affected me. Isn’t that true about everything, though? There’s always something or someone in the world that brings suffering or is suffering, but we don’t see how it matters to us until it affect us. Cancer has been a large part of my life and always will be. An illness, such as cancer, is like a ticking clock. Some have been saved by cures, however many have lost the war. Many people have fought the long battle with cancer, like brave warriors, such as my father.
In elementary school, it all began with one surgery. One brain tumor was the beginning of our new lives. At the age of 10, I was a little girl visiting my father in the hospital after a major brain surgery. Always seeing my hard working and energetic father with his head in bandages was too difficult for a 10 year old to bear. To see my father sit on a hospital bed, surrounded by other patients was devastating. Still, the smile on my father’s face didn’t disappear. He was the man who would light a room up, and even at the hospital, that’s what he did. He regained his health almost immediately and life returned to normal again. At home, he took multiple medications and I would make sure not to hurt his head or stitches whenever I sat with him. Every time he came home from work, I would run and give him a big hug. Life carried on normally for a year. I realized something was wrong again when the hugs became painful and he was not strong enough to lift his daughter. Slowly, things turned for the worse. Multiple times, my father went straight from work to the clinic and returned home with huge bandages. As his little girl, I would carefully get a scissor and help him remove the bandages. There were permanent marks of where the needle was always inserted. Still, I maintained my strength in front of him. Every time I saw the dark dots on his forearms, something pierced my heart, and I wished I could take away all his pain. If there was any way my father did not have to go through this and all his troubles could come to me. No longer did I want to see those bandages. No longer did I want to hear about appointments. No longer did I want to hear about 1 hour long MRIs. No longer did I want my father to go through this. As my father continued chemotherapy and medications, he began to lose his hair, and a blue cap became the symbol of my father’s brain cancer. Everywhere he went, his blue cap went with him.
One day, just before entering middle school, my father came home wearing a hospital cap on his head. At that moment, something hit me. Something told me that what had taken my father to the operation room would take him again. I frantically asked my mother for an explanation of what was happening with my father, but nothing was known at the time. My father bravely decided to undergo surgery again. Again, now 11, the same girl visited her father in the gloomy, chilling hospital. This time, much weaker, my father lay on the hospital bed. As an 11 year old girl, seeing her father in the hospital again after another major brain surgery, I couldn’t hold it in, and tears flowed out like a waterfall. I couldn’t watch him being taken away from me. Operation after operation, it had changed my father. Before, my father would donate every minute of his time to his work and his family. Now, another portion was made for the doctors. The doctors and the medications took him from me. As a young girl, I was eager to find out what had caused my father to go to the hospital twice. What had caused him to shave his head and wear that cap? What had caused him to grow weaker? But, whatever it did, it never took away his smile.
As my father’s condition grew worse, nurses would come by to check his health and would always suggest guidance counseling to my family, but we always had each other. To cope, I would speak with my mom and my brother until late hours and write in my journal. My journal was full of compositions, poetry or sketches about how the day went by. Sometimes I felt that I was pulled under water and cancer did not let me breathe. No matter how his condition grew, whenever you asked him how he felt, he would always say, “I’m feeling well.” My father still bravely fought. My courageous warrior never gave up. He took breaths even after his lungs failed. He continued to smile even after his muscles stopped functioning. And I know that he kept his smile just for my family.
The impact of cancer has left an imprint on my life. My father’s experience with cancer showed me how much he loved our family, since he would never wipe the smile off his face so that we couldn’t feel his pain. From my experience with cancer, I have decided to become a neuro-oncologist when I grow up. These occurrences have guided me to grow interested in the study of the brain and how cancer forms within it. Having my father taken from me, I have grown determined to understand how cancer develops and to find its cure. Watching cancer affect my father day after day has instilled in me a determination and persistence to find the cure for brain cancer. Cancer has affected my life and always will as I continue to pursue my career to understand this deadly killer.