The Path to Freedom

Getting diagnosed with cancer was never part of my plan, I mean, it's cancer. I don't think anyone really ever wakes up and says I'm going to get cancer. It's just some tragic thing that happens to the best of us. It changes our entire lives.  I think when you're diagnosed with an illness,  you're ready for a lot to happen. You get this idea of all the expectations that are coming your way. I was ready for a lot, but I was never ready to be accused of lying about very, most important thing in my life. The first person to ever accuse me of lying was someone in my own family.  I have a very toxic family and so I guess on some level I wasn't as surprised as I should've been.  It was normal for my family to cut me down, and to make it about them. I wasn't ready for my friends to believe their lies. You see, when I first diagnosed with cancer, I didn't tell anyone for various reasons. The main one being that I wasn't ready to accept it. I was...

As humans, we don't want to think about the worst of things. We try to live our lives, taking each day and making the best of everything. We try to focus so much on our day to day lives, even the littlest things because that's all we know how to do. We paint a beautiful masterpiece to escape to so we don't have to accept the inevitable, which is death. I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of twenty three and it was the first time in my life that I was actually faced with the reality that I'm not invincible and that some day I will die.  I felt as if I was on the brink of death, staring it in the face. Death was standing before me at such a young age, and I felt the anger, the darkness in my heart coming to the surface. I spent so many nights being angry at the world, trying to find the meaning of life. I was a twenty three year old woman with a broken spirit and an undeserving diagnosis I couldn't seem to accept.  I couldn't accept the fact that I was being...

You. Have. Cancer. Those three words are the very words that both changed and destroyed my life forever. I was twenty-three years old when I first heard that word pertaining to myself. I was sitting in the emergency after a series of multiple tests the physician assistant had ordered be ran on me. At the time, I told her she was ridiculous, and they were wasting time and insurance money running all those tests because I was just fine. I convinced myself I was just stressed out and tired. I sat there, zoning out as the doctor and physician assistant before me started talking options with me. I remember hearing the words surgery, oncology and radiation. I don’t know if I was in shock, or truly just didn’t want to believe it, but I refused to accept what they had said. I asked to be discharged and I left. I made an appointment with my primary physician and got the same news. I got another opinion, and then one more after that before I finally just said okay, well maybe I’m the on...

“You have cancer” These are the words that no one ever expects to hear. You think that this could never happen to you. As humans, especially when we are young, we think we’re invincible. We convince ourselves that nothing bad will ever happen us because we’re so young and have our entire lives ahead of us. We’re naive enough to start to believe that nothing can touch us. The thing is though, we are human. Life doesn’t discriminate, and bad things do happen. I was twenty-three years old when I was diagnosed with stage III Anaplastic Astrocytoma, or as most people know it as, Glioblastoma. I remember so vividly sitting in the doctors office, it was a Wednesday afternoon, three o'clock. It was a sunny day and I remember blowing off work for the appointment because I could no longer stand the pain.  Before that day, I was just a normal twenty four year old stressing out money, being independent and all of the many bills I had to pay, but since that day I've felt mysel...

“Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.” You hear these five words often when people talk about the five stages of grief. I’m going to talk to you today in this article about those five stages, but not in regards to a death, or someone I love being sick. I’m going to talk to you about the five stages of grief in regards to my own terminal illness. Denial When I found in May of 2016 that I had stage three glioblastoma, so many thoughts ran through my head. So many feelings. My first reaction though was denial. I left the doctor’s office in pure denial .I pretended for weeks that it wasn’t happening. I pretended that they were wrong. I told myself that there was no way that this was happening to me, it couldn’t be. I was twenty three, I was too young. So I tried going on with my life, ignored the calls from my doctor, and went on living my life. Until I couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t handle the fact that something like this had actually happened to me. I couldn’t ...

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.” If you know this quote, then you have been one of the many who’ve read or watched the heartbreaking book or movie, The Fault In our Stars. I use this quote today because it is very fitting for the situation I’ve been facing for the past year of my life. It describes in so many ways how I’ve felt about everything that life has thrown at me with dealing with Glioblastoma, stage III. Also known as an   Anaplastic Astrocytoma. I’ve never really been the kind of person who’s ever got personal with my writing. I’ve written novels about people who aren’t real. I’ve written articles on puckermob about things I see in everyday life, but never have I ever been this personal when it comes to writing. Until I got cancer, anyway. I find that I have so much to say these...