In August 2010 I must have been told by my pediatrician a million times that whatever I had was a sinus infection, but I never believed it. My face was swelling up, half of my face felt numb and my nose was constantly dripping. I went to an ENT doctor in September and after one look at me, he ordered a CT scan immediately.
The next day as I walked through the school, I was looking forward to staying after for club meetings. A few minutes before school ended, the principal came into my classroom and told me that my mom was at the school to pick me up. I argued with her that I had to stay after school for club meeting, but she told me I had to go to the city hospital right away. I wouldn’t learn until weeks later that my mom had spent that whole day crying in the doctor’s office after seeing the results of the CT scan. The CT scan showed that there was a huge tumor in my face.
I remember sitting in the hospital not knowing what was going on, no one wanted to tell me anything till they were absolutely sure I had cancer. The doctors finally did a biopsy of the tumor and after a couple of weeks they told me that it was cancerous. It wasn’t till the end of September 2010 that I was diagnosed with the rare tissue cancer called Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma in my sinus cavity, my jaw, around my eye and in the lining of my brain. The doctors spoke of surgically removing the tumor and rebuilding my face, but one doctor wanted to start chemotherapy first to see if the tumor would shrink. After one chemotherapy treatment the swelling in my face went down; the doctors decided to just use chemotherapy and radiation to treat me.
Going to the hospital in the city was very hard for me. I hated being so far away from my home in Long Island. After a couple months of treatment, I asked if I could be switched over to Stony Brook University hospital, which was only a half hour from my house. My doctor was very hesitant about switching me over until I ended up in Stony Brook’s ER. One night after treatment, my fever shot up to 104 degrees, which could be lethal to a cancer patient. My mom rushed me over to Stony Brook’s ER at 3 am so I could receive antibiotics. The nurses and doctors at Stony Brook were so nice I begged my doctor to switch me over to the university’s hospital. Before Christmas of 2010 I was finally being treated at Stony Brook’s children’s hospital and pediatric cancer center.
Receiving treatment at Stony Brook was very different than the city hospital. There was a huge room full of toys and crafts for the pediatric patients to play in and meet one another. The nurses were much friendlier and became my friends during treatment. There was a parent room with dining tables and chairs for visitors to sit down and relax. Sometimes I would ask my mom to bring me food from home and I would eat in there to get out of my room. The rooms were brighter with big widows for sunlight to come through. You could see all of Long Island from the windows. Being closer to home meant that my friends and family could visit me in the hospital too, which helped me emotionally. I realized then that when I felt happy that chemotherapy treatments went by faster.
Even though things were looking good and chemotherapy treatments were working, there was always a bump in the road. My new doctor at Stony Brook decided to do radiation treatments and chemotherapy treatments at the same time to attack the cancer. I did a full month of radiation treatments and then started to develop mouth sores. There were only three more radiation treatments left when I had to be hospitalized because the mouth sores got so bad that I couldn’t eat, drink or talk. The sores were in my gums, on my tongue, and down my throat. I had to resort to writing down what I wanted to say for weeks before I could talk. I spent three months in the hospital getting intravenous nutrition, antibiotics, and pain medicine. The hospital wouldn’t let me leave till I could start to eat on my own again. During this hospitalization my mom had to drive through some of the worst blizzards Long Island had ever experienced just to visit me. My mouth sores caused me so much pain when I tried to eat that I lost a lot of weight; I was given special weight gaining shakes in order to get back to healthy weight. Even though I survived this horrible occurrence of mouth sores I would get them every couple of months during my year and a half of cancer treatment, but now that I knew how to heal mouth sores from my first time having them, the mouth sores I had later in my treatments weren’t that bad.
I met a lot of other cancer patients at Stony Brook, one of them being a four year old girl named Darianna. I was put in a hospital room at the time that had Tinker Bell decals on the walls. She had seen the decals and I heard her outside of my door. I invited her into my room with her mom and introduced myself to her. After she left to go back to her room, my nurse told me that Darianna had just been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I wanted to cheer Darianna up so badly that in the middle of the night I drew a bunch of pictures of Tinker Bell and told my nurse to give them to Darianna. We were both in and out of the hospital for our chemotherapy treatment but we always hung out together when we were both there at the same time. I would learn a few months after I finished my cancer treatment that she had passed away from her cancer at the age of five.
There was another cancer patient I became very close friends with, but he wasn’t being treated at Stony Brook like me. He was my classmate Joey; we had been in a couple of the same classes and had a lot of friends in common. Joey and I were diagnosed with cancer around the same time, which shocked the high school. Joey had been diagnosed with cancer at Stony Brook but chose to get treated at Sloan Hospital in the city. We kept in contact threw Facebook and texting and became close friends even though we never saw each other during our cancer treatments. We always spoke of coming back to school as cancer survivors and what colleges we were planning to go to. Unfortunately a month after I had returned to school as a cancer survivor, Joey had died from a stroke. All of my classmates grieved for weeks; I grieved for months.
Having cancer taught me something very important, to be happy and make others happy. I feel that because I reminded myself to be happy during my cancer that I survived. I lost two of my good friends during to cancer and I wanted to help others who have cancer. During my cancer journey I made a video journal on YouTube to help other pediatric cancer patients (www.youtube.com/user/BroccoliRabeBlog). I named it BroccoliRabeBlog because my cancer Rhabdomyosarcoma sounded like my favorite side dish Broccoli Rabe. After I had finished my cancer treatment in January 2012, I heard that the American Cancer Society was holding an event at my high school called Relay For Life, I signed up for it right away and made a relay team to join me. I raised over $4,000 for American Cancer Society with the help of family and friends. During the event I was asked to do a speech during opening ceremonies. I told everyone there about how important I found it was to be happy and make others happy. Even though I’m done with chemotherapy and radiation I still experience side effects from the treatments like neuropathy pain, but I always remember to stay happy and make others happy.