Part 2

“God is preparing you for greater things.”

(Disclaimer: If you haven’t read part one of this story, then you should probably scroll down and do that first)

            Before I start the second part of this story, I just want to say a few things. I hope you don’t let some parts of this story change your viewpoint of me as the person I am now. Some parts of this story I am embarrassed about, and I am embarrassed by some of the thoughts I had as well, but without these parts of the story and thoughts that I had, I wouldn’t who I am and where I am today. I wouldn’t change anything about this story because it shaped and molded me into the person I am now, and there is nothing that I would want to change about that. I would just like to reiterate that this is my blatantly authentic story and my walk with Jesus. It gets ugly. It definitely is messy. My life isn’t the least bit perfect. I just want to show people it’s ok to be wrong and be someone who has made mistakes. It ok to be someone who knows failure, and its ok to have moments of pure weakness. Because, get real… everyone has made mistakes, everyone has been wrong before, and everyone screws up every once in a while. I don’t want my story to go unheard. Not because I want attention, but because I want it to be life changing to someone beside myself. I want my story to benefit other people… or another person, even if it were just one, then posting this would be worth it. I believe that everyone’s story has a purpose, no matter how embarrassing some moments are. God didn't intend for us to live our lives and be quite about the things that have shaped and molded us. And that's not want I intend to do either. I don't want to be quite about the things God is doing and has done in my life, and this is my way of shouting it to anyone who wants to listen. So as we continue, please keep these things in mind.

“We all have chapters we would rather keep unpublished.”

            So cancer. Can I tell you guys a story I am ashamed of? I think about this story almost every day, at least once a week. Let me take you back to a time before I knew I was sick. It was my freshman year of high school, so just a year before this all began. I was participating in a group project in my marketing class, and we had to come up with a superhero or villain. Then, we had to try and sell this superhero or villain. Well, my team wanted to be different, so we decided that we were going to come up with a villain. A bad guy. Someone who creates misery. The worst thing we could come up with is a villain that gave people cancer. Yeah. No joke. This was one of my class projects in high school before all this happened. Oh, the irony. My heart is racing even just thinking about other people reading this part of the story because I am so embarrassed that my group chose this as a villain. This concept was probably the most brilliant villain. It was awful and mean. I tell you this story not to embarrass myself, but because it is an essential step in the transformation of my heart, the transformation of my life. We should be scared to tell people things that we are ashamed of. We shouldn’t be scared to tell people things that we wish we could change or to tell people about mistakes that we have made. I wish there were more honesty in this world. It was change the whole course of everything if people were just honest with each other. Instead of communicating with a “he said/she said” mentality, we should communicate directly to one other what the problem is. This is getting a little off topic, but I do think it is important to say. I think we should be able to tell each other every excruciating detail of our embarrassing lives without being judged, without fear. And even if there is judgment, who cares? The one judgment that matters is the judgment of God, and he’s not going to judge you for wanting to share a mistake you made. I’m rambling, so we are going to refocus here. Back to the villain. I used to be so focus on the bad; I wish that we had come up with a superhero that cured cancer instead. Wouldn’t that be nice?

“He must become greater. I must become less.”

Radiation treatment started finally started when I got my food tube removed, which was probably the most disgusting thing I have ever experienced in my life. It is kind of a funny side story and what better way to start off part two than with a funny story. So, when someone has a food tube, most of the time they “eat” overnight. There is a machine that pumps a protein nutrient milkshake into your stomach. Because it pumps this through the tube, you have to flush everything out at the end of each “meal” so that nothing dries up and gets stuck in the tube. Well… what do you think I did? I forgot to flush the tube in the morning. I also drank water through this tube as well, so during the day, when I went to “drink” water, the water wasn’t going down the tube. I was so confused, and then it hit me… I forgot to flush the tube, so now I wasn’t going to be able to get anything down the tube, and seeing as this tube was pretty much keeping me alive, it was time to panic. What ended up happening was that my mom had to pull the tube out… the only possible way for this tube to be removed was pulling it out of my nose, so some of the contents of my stomach were going to be pulled up through my throat and nose. I guess this is more of a gross story than a funny story. Sorry about that. For a second, a very long second, I tasted all of the contents of my stomach as she pulled the tube up through my nose. Probably the grossest thing I’ve ever tasted and maybe too much information for you, but oh well, its part of the story.

“Though the mountains be shaken, and the hills removed. Yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor My covenant of peace be removed says the Lord who has compassion on you.”

Anyways, back to radiation. During the first appointment, I had to get a plastic mask molded to my body that started at my collarbone and covered my head. It was strange. This mold was used to attach my to a table so that I wouldn’t move during treatment. It was kind of like a restraint and reminded me of something out of a horror movie. I guess this mask would be a good representation of how I felt at the time. When I wore this mask, it was hard to breath, I couldn't move, and I couldn’t think. This was pretty much my life at the time. I felt like I wasn’t moving, stuck in my cage of a body. I felt like I couldn’t breath because I was scared for a while that it could be my last breath. I was never as close to dying as I felt I was, but when you’re going through something like this, every day feels like it's the end.  And I couldn’t think because the word cancer was embedded into all of my thoughts. My first radiation appointment was probably one of the first times that it really sunk in that I had cancer. This is really happening. This isn’t a dream. I guess at this point I was almost a ghost in my own body. I felt like I was watching myself live. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t care. Of course, to family and friends, I had to look like everything was ok. I had to give answers to the questions I heard millions of time like “are you ok?” or “Is there anything at all we can do for you?”. The answers I gave to those questions were always yes and no, respectively, but what was I supposed to say? No, I’m completely falling apart on the inside. No, I’m not ok, I don’t want to do this anymore. No, I’m not ok with any of this. No I’m not ok with God. No, I’m not ok that this is happening to me. I didn’t want to make anyone else feel my pain. I didn’t want anyone to feel the least bit like I did, and I felt like if I shared what I was really feeling, then they would. I didn’t want people to feel bad for me or to pity me because that would just make things worse. And what was anyone supposed to do for me that could make this situation any better or easier? I wish that there was something that anyone could have done for me, but there wasn’t. The only thing that would make it better would have been making the situation disappear or for some magically superhero to come along and cure cancer. After my first appointment of radiation, I wanted more than anything for this situation to disappear. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare, but we all know that wasn’t going to happen.

I was so self-centered when all of this was first happening. I knew so little and didn’t care about anything anymore. I didn’t understand that not every bad situation is a bad situation. I was pretty depressed for probably about the first month that this was happening. Actually, confused would probably be a better word to describe how I felt. Looking back on all of my days of radiation, its pretty much a big blur. Of course, I remember going everyday and I remember waiting in the waiting room for longer than I wanted to, but I don’t really remember how I felt. I think maybe I didn’t feel. I know it sounds weird, but I think that I wanted to numb myself so that I wouldn’t be upset anymore. The only downside to this is that numbing yourself doesn't only mean you don’t feel sad anymore, but it also means that you don’t feel joy. I eventually realized that if I would rather feel intense sadness than not feel joy at all. Pure joy is such a healing feeling.

“You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.”

Everyday after school at 3:15pm for the next two months, my mom drove me to Northside hospital in Atlanta, which is a 45min-1hour drive from our house. It was exhausting. I was weak and sick, but I also had to keep up with my homework and classes. They say junior year is the hardest year in high school… well that was an understatement. I wasn’t prepared for this, and even though I had a great group of friends, there wasn’t much that they could do to make this any better. In a way, I felt defeated. I didn’t let it show because I didn’t want to be, but I was so defeated. I was done. I was more tired than I had ever been and I wanted to be done. No matter how hard I tried not to, I drifted far from God. I was still a part of the youth group, and I put on a happy face, which made it seem like nothing had changed, but I was far away. I was a ghost. I was mad at God because I didn’t understand why this was happening to me. Then, one day one of my youth leaders gave a talk about how God’s power is made perfect in weakness. God’s power is made perfect in all of our weaknesses. I was so weak, but in that weakness, God was healing me. Healing me in so many different ways. My heart was changing into a heart after God rather than a heart after this world. I started to realize that maybe this whole cancer thing wasn’t such a bad thing that happened to me. In a worldly kind of view this might be the one of the worst things that could happen to someone, but I didn’t want to be a slave to this world. In a Godly view, this whole experience saved my life.

I remember the moment everything changed. The moment that I came alive for this first time since my first surgery was on a mission trip in Mexico. I went with a group of people I didn’t know super well on purpose. I didn’t want to be the cancer girl even though that's what most people thought of me by now. I didn’t want peoples’ view of me to be cancer. I didn’t want that to be all they could see, and I didn’t want them to pity me. I was actually tired of feeling sorry for myself. I came to a realization that I am not going through something that I can’t handle. I think of all of the persecution that Jesus had to go through, and I also think about the persecution that people in non-Christian countries go through every day. Then I think about me, and I think… How selfish am I to feel sorry for myself. I live in a place were I can proclaim my faith with almost no consequences. How selfish was I to feel sorry for myself…

“God reached down and rescued me.”

Part 3 coming soon

Part 1

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful do not just happen.” – Elizabeth Ros

This isn’t an autobiography. It’s not a love story. It might not have a “happy ending”. This isn’t about sympathy. It isn’t a place for complaining. It isn’t something to cause controversy about. It might not even be something that anyone reads. So what is it? This is a blatantly authentic story about a girl and her walk with Jesus. It gets ugly. It definitely is messy. My life isn’t the least bit perfect. I just want to show people it’s ok to be wrong and be someone who has made mistakes. It ok to be someone who knows failure, and its ok to have moments of pure weakness. Because, get real… everyone has made mistakes, everyone has been wrong before, and everyone screws up every once in a while. This story isn’t about popularity. I don’t want it to be famous. Then what’s the point of posting it for anyone to read? I don’t want my story to go unheard. Not because I want attention, but because I want it to be life changing to someone beside myself. I want my story to benefit other people… or another person, even if it were just one, then posting this would be worth it. I believe that everyone’s story has a purpose. God didn't intend for us to live our lives and be quite about the things that have shaped and molded us. And that's not want I intend to do either. I don't want to be quite about the things God is doing and has done in my life, and this is my way of shouting it to anyone who wants to listen. So were does this part of my life start. Well, it starts the day that changed everything.

“Don’t shine so others can see you. Shine so that through you, other can see Him.” – C.S. Lewis

It was October, one of my favorite months of the year. The weather was a perfect combination of too hot in the sun and too cold in the shade. The leaves were changing colors and high school football was well underway. As a sophomore in high school, I didn’t have a care in the world besides working towards getting my license so that I wouldn’t have to rely on my mom to drive me around or bug my sister for rides anymore. In high school, it’s all about getting out and having freedom. Unfortunately, October was also the time of the year that I had to go to the dentist. Honestly, I never flossed so I predicted a few cavities in my near future. I was dreading it… I’m not sure that anyone likes to go to the dentist. And if there is someone out there that does, well, in my eyes, you’re crazy. It’s a place where people put their hands all up in your mouth and expect you to have a full on conversation with them while doing it. No. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s something I had to do every 6 months mainly because my mom told me to. Even though I hated the idea of the dentist at the time, I wouldn’t be able to repay my mom for the repercussions of this dentist appointment.

So, October 22, 2008 finally rolled around; the day of the dentist appointment that would forever change the course of my life. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. I was just happy that I got to miss my first two classes of the day. That’s the trick with dentist appointments… they are totally worth it in the end if you get to miss school. Everything was going well at my appointment. To my surprise, I didn’t have any cavities, but my gums weren’t perfect. Really, I was just told to floss more, which is what they told me every time. You would think I would learn eventually, but honestly, I still suck at making sure I floss every day. I'll get it one of these days. At the end of the appointment, the dentist told me she was going to check my jawline and chin area for any lumps that might be related to mouth cancer. Her hands were freezing and I was getting a little bit annoyed when she moved a little bit more down my neck and kept touching the same spot over and over again on my neck. When she stopped, she didn’t immediately say “Everything looks great!” and I knew something was wrong. She did one of those sighs that people do when they don't want to be the one to tell you bad news, but she had no other choice. So, she told me that it felt like one of my lymph nodes on the left side of my neck was swollen, which could have meant a number of things like strep throat, mono, etc. Great. Getting sick already and its only October. The only thing I could really think was, “Well, at least it’s not mouth cancer”. I told my mom the bad news that I may possibly have strep. So the avalanche of doctor’s visit began.

“Prayer is powerful, but remember that God works in His timing, not yours. Have patience.”

That drowning feeling

            Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to have some part in the medical field. I really wanted to be a nurse, so going to the doctor’s office wasn’t really a big deal to me. I didn’t mind watching movies in the waiting room or playing with those toys that were wooden colored balls on wires. The only thing I didn’t like was the cold. It was always cold. I love winter, but the cold in doctor’s offices are a different kind of bitter cold. A cold that didn’t feel right. So with what I thought was a swollen lymph node, the tests started. I didn’t have strep. Didn’t have mono. Nothing was wrong with my tonsils. The list went on an on. Test after test, I was never so upset to not be sick. I just wanted it to end. So next came the CT scan; the test that finally gave me some answers. However, they weren’t the results I wanted to hear. I had a tumor. A tumor. My whole life was flipped upside down. I never thought something like this could happen to me. I was just a typical, sophomore girl who was involved with a wonderful youth group. I had a normal life. I had an easy life. Maybe that's why God planned it to happen like this. I was too comfortable in my faith.

            My parents divorced when I was a freshman in high school. To be honest, it was something that I has seen coming because they hadn't been getting along for the longest time. They both had their flaws like everyone in this world does, but I could tell that love wasn’t strong enough for them to ignore those flaws. And that is fine. They weren’t meant to be together and that was their choice to make, but that didn’t make it an easier for me to deal with. Growing up, my father and I didn’t have the best relationship. It was always “yes sir” and ever time he came home from work he took control of the TV. Maybe we didn’t have a good relationship because he was always seen as the discipline. My mom was the good guy (or girl… you known what I mean). Maybe it was because he worked so much to provide. Or maybe it is just because we didn’t have much time to bond over common interests. I don’t know. But somewhere along the line, my dad and I drifted apart, and my parents’ divorce wasn’t clean. It was messy. Really messy. Some things happened that aren’t my place to say, but I can tell you that the events that led to my parents divorce created a bigger divide in the space between my dad and I. Maybe that’s why God planned my life to happen this way. It will make sense after I’m done, but in the end, my dad and I are closer than we have been in a long time, and my heart is full.

            I also grew up in the church, but I might as well have never gone to church. I didn’t have a relationship with God. I just went because my parents wanted me to. It wasn’t until middle school that I went to church because I wanted to. Granted, I wanted to go for the wrong reasons. I wanted to go to hang out with my friends. To be honest, I don’t remember the exact day that I accepted Jesus as my savior. I should, but I don’t. My middle school years are really all a blur because I was in and out. I was lukewarm. Hot and then cold. And Jesus doesn’t want that. I didn’t know what I wanted either. It should have been simple. Jesus rose from the grave, and if that’s true, then nothing else matters. My life should have been His. All His. Because without that, what would this life be for? Nothing. And I believe life is for something, but I didn’t understand that when I was in middle school. I thought that if you had faith, life would fix itself. I thought that I would be set without doing anything to create a relationship with Jesus.

            Well, that's enough background for now, but after the avalanche of MRI’s, PET scans, barium tests, X-rays and CT scans, it was decided that I was having surgery. I was terrified. Surgery? I had never even sprained an ankle before, and now life-threatening surgery. The location of the tumor made it so that a biopsy wasn’t possible without surgery. It was located in between my carotid arteries on the left side of my neck. The risky part of the surgery was that there was a chance that my artery could get cut if they were unable to remove the tumor from it. The doctor’s reassured me that I would be fine. I didn’t feel fine. I felt like I was drowning, but I didn’t have any choice but to fight as hard as I could and getting surgery was my only fighting chance.

            July rolled around and on the 29 in 2009, I was getting prepped to go into the operating room. Never having had surgery before made me have a panic attack, which I don’t remember because they immediately sedated me as my mom told me. Apparently I also told my mom to take a picture of me – a really embarrassing picture of me – before I went into the operating room. So I went in. And I came out alive, barely.

"God sometimes take us into troubled waters not to drown us, but to cleanse us."

The Never-ending Complications

            I woke up groggy. I had no idea where I was. All I remember were white walls and an uncomfortable bed. It took me a minute, but I finally figured out that I made it out of surgery and was still in the hospital. As soon as they started moving me to another room, I threw up. That was the first of my really long day – or month – of complications. The surgeon came in to the room and described what had just happened in surgery to me. I was supposed to be in surgery for 3 hours, which quickly turned into 9 hours. The surgeon told me that my tumor was “sticky” and she had to cut part of my artery in surgery in order to get it off. What? At this point I was trying to figure out how in the heck I was still alive.  This is what happened. They cut part of the artery, and I lost a lot of blood, a lot. They ended up taking a vein from my upper leg and regraphing it into my neck, clipping off a bunch of nerves that they had to cut in the process. I still have the staples in my neck to this day. This seemed to be the only thing that went wrong, granted it was a big thing to go wrong, but it was supposed to be the only thing that went wrong. One positive thing that came of this was that I didn’t feel any pain in my neck. None. I didn’t need pain meds or anything because they had cut so many nerves in my neck that I couldn’t feel anything at all. I still can’t actually, but I’ve gotten used to it. Well, we thought that was it. I was supposed to be in the hospital for one night, but that quickly turned into a week. Because I was in surgery for 9 hours, there was stress on a muscle in my neck from the breathing tube. Of course, this muscle is the muscle that I used to swallow food. I tried and tried to eat food, but I couldn’t swallow it. Every time I tried to swallow, I felt like I was choking… because I was. All the doctors said it was in my head and that I was making it up until I got a live barium x-ray. This showed that I wasn’t lying and that there really was something wrong with a muscle in my neck. So how was I going to eat? An IV can only sustain you for so long, so I had to get a food tube put in through my nose that went down to my stomach and that is how I ate and drank. On top of all of this, in order to leave the hospital, I had to be up and walking around. Well, since I lost so much blood in surgery, ever time I tried to stand up, I passed out. The first time I tried to get up and walk two feet to a chair next to my hospital bed, I blacked out when I made it to the chair… the chair that was TWO feet away. I woke up to my mom slapping me in the face trying to get me to wake up, which is funny looking back on it now. I’ll spare you some of the other details, but I couldn’t get up and walk to the bathroom either. We’ll just leave it at that.

            At this point, I really didn’t think I was going to make it home. I was exhausted from doing something as simple as standing up. I couldn’t help but feel bad for being so helpless. My mom had to do so much for me. I am so thankful for her. I have never broken down and cried so many times in one week before. I honestly didn’t think I would ever make it out of that hospital. My friends stopped by every once in a while, but the majority of the time I was alone. Alone, aggravated, and confused. I didn’t understand. I was healthy. What had I done to deserve this?  This is when that drowning feeling got immensely worse. I was terrified because this wasn’t in my plan. I didn’t think this was how my life was supposed to pan out. I was selfish for thinking that. I took everything for granted. I took my active life for granted. I took my health for granted. I took being able to eat a meal for granted. I took all of the simple things for granted. I was only focused on how I wanted my life to be. I was only focused on what I thought I deserved. No one is entitled to anything. I hate the quote “it always rains the hardest on the people who deserve the sun”. Who deserved the sun? No one. Yes there are good people, but no one is exempt from suffering. The only reason we live is because Christ died for us. So what makes us think that we are entitled to a life without suffering, a perfect life, when we are so imperfect ourselves? I came to revelation in this hospital. No matter how much you want your life to go the way that you planned, God has a better plan for you. It may not seem like the it at the time, but God has a perfect plan for you in this imperfect world.

            
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light" - Buddha

The C Word

            You would think that after all the complications in surgery, my life would soon be getting back to normal. That wasn’t the case. Instead my life plans would be completely shifted in a new direction. In a direction that absolutely everyone is afraid to go in. The doctor’s came in about the third day I was in the hospital to tell me that the biopsy showed that the tumor was malignant (cancerous). The good thing was that they got the entire tumor out, but to be sure it was all gone I was told that I had to get radiation treatment. My head was spinning. My head is spinning right now even thinking about it. Sometimes, it doesn’t feel real. It didn’t feel real then. I have cancer? Seriously. Me? How is this happening? When a patient hears the word cancer, 99% of the time, they immediately think of death. And death is a scary thing to think about. I had no idea how this was supposed to fit into my life plan. I didn’t know what to think, so all I could do is get treatment. I was mad. I was so furious with God because I felt like I had done nothing to deserve this. It wasn’t fair, and I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to believe in a God who could put me in so much pain. I was selfish and scared.

"The future is scary, but you can't just run back to the past because it's familiar. Yes, it's tempting, but it's a mistake."