I'm using the lessons that cancer taught me to move forward in life.
BY Kim Johnson
PUBLISHED October 21, 2018
Kim is a nursing student who is hoping to find her place amongst the phenomenal oncology nurses and doctors who cared for her sister. She loves reading, volunteering and enjoying the outdoors of Colorado.
When my sister first began to exhibit signs of being sick, I didn't let my head go to all the darker places that my heart was leading me. I tried mightily to assume that she would be OK or that my eyes were betraying me, and she wasn't really that sick. As she got worse, curiosity won over and I began to research all that could be wrong. One word kept coming up: cancer.
I didn't know much about this vague illness. I heard the word many times throughout my life, but it had only affected the mother of a friend from grade school. I didn't know specifics of even that with cancer, there were so many different kinds and they all attacked the body in different ways.
At first, I tried to convince myself that I was being irrational. “Of course, if she did have cancer, she'd have been much sicker than the person that I was living with,” I thought. As time wore on, though, I realized just how sick she was. She lost so much weight that her skin hung off her body. She was pale, and other people began to notice that she was pale, and other people began to notice that something was wrong. Despite how hard I didn't want it to be true, she was clearly sick. The problem? She was 27 and she wasn't convinced that it was bad enough to go to the doctor.
I didn't know much about this vague illness. I heard the word many times throughout my life, but it had only affected the mother of a friend from grade school. I didn't know specifics of even that with cancer, there were so many different kinds and they all attacked the body in different ways.
At first, I tried to convince myself that I was being irrational. “Of course, if she did have cancer, she'd have been much sicker than the person that I was living with,” I thought. As time wore on, though, I realized just how sick she was. She lost so much weight that her skin hung off her body. She was pale, and other people began to notice that she was pale, and other people began to notice that something was wrong. Despite how hard I didn't want it to be true, she was clearly sick. The problem? She was 27 and she wasn't convinced that it was bad enough to go to the doctor.
No comments:
Post a Comment