I have had so many posts sitting in my drafts for this blog for months, trying to decide how to start everything – how would I introduce myself, set the tone for what I write here, things like that.
Instead, I feel inspired to share a story. In April, I had an opportunity to attend the St Jude PLAYLIVE Summit, where the theme for this year was stories. Some of the other attendees shared their reasons for supporting St Jude, and I began to really think about my reason – and realizing supporting this went so much deeper than just “I wanted to keep giving after doing the math-a-thons in elementary school.”
Cancer has touched almost every aspect of my life from the time I was 6 – in 1992. I had watched my entire life (at the time) as it slowly killed my grandmother, not understanding really what it was or how it had spread to her entire body, and the doctors hadn’t caught it until it was in her lymph nodes.
From then on starting in elementary school, I would hear about cancer, St Jude and see the impact nearly every day. From my teachers, to classmates, depictions in movies and books (Marvin’s Room during the early craze of Leo Decaprio fandom, and later A Walk To Remember, and countless others), it was everywhere. Yet in everyday life, it was still something no one talked about unless it was a diagnosis, relapse, passing, or most rarely, a celebration of remission.
Cancer has given me a whole lot of sucker punches since I left school, too. My grandfather (widower to my grandmother) emailed me in February of March 2005, while I was away at college. They found a mass on his pancreas, and the biopsies showed it was malignant. I broke down, not knowing how to function. My grandpa and I had been close since my grandmother passed, taking day trips to museums and local zoos, and he encouraged his passion for computers in me, teaching me how to use them, and ultimately replace parts and potentially build (or rebuild) my own.
The unfortunate thing about pancreatic cancer is that so little can be done for it, and even if someone is in “remission” it’s still a situation of “brace yourself and wait” because it will always come back. Grandpas tumor wasn’t in a place where it could be removed, so instead there was aggressive chemo and radiation, which caused it to shrink. Our whole family celebrated, and I dropped out of college because I felt spending time with my family was more important. At my 20th birthday dinner, as we left the restaurant my mom made a remark that made me angry. “Your grandfather doesn’t have much time left. He didn’t look well during dinner.” (Thanks mom, for helping burn the everlasting memory I have of my last birthday with him into something sad, not happy like he would have wanted.)
After that, every time grandpa and I would go out (almost every week, we’d go for breakfast together – a tradition we started when I was in high school), I would watch him carefully to see if there were signs of him tiring or skin discoloring that could be a sign the tumor had enlarged, and was aggressively attacking the rest of his organs.
It wasn’t until late August that I really noticed anything, when he had come over my parents to drop off a package. He looked…tired, and his skin had a grey pallor to it. Usually he would be one to stay and talk to my dad or myself, but this time it was obvious he just wanted to go home. My heart hurt in that moment, because I knew it was only a matter of time.
September 16, 2006 – barely two weeks after he had stopped by, around 6:40pm we got a call from the local hospital. We needed to get there as soon as possible – grandpa didn’t have much time. I was in my room, working on something, and my parents were downstairs in the living room. Dad bellowed up the stairs at me to get some shoes on and get to the car, we had an emergency. I threw on my flipflops and almost fell down the stairs from taking them so fast.
We made it to the hospital, and were quickly ushered into a small, dark, private room. Grandpa was in one of those wheeled hospital recliners, hooked up to an IV, and his wife was sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. She looked up at us and patted his arm (he appeared asleep), and told him we were there. He didn’t respond.
She and I hugged, and I stood between him and the wall next to his chair, holding his hand in mine. For the next few hours we made small talk with her, and she told us what had happened.
“He wasn’t feeling well this morning,” she looked at him as she said it, patting his hand. “He woke me up around 4am to tell me he wanted to come to the hospital. We got here, and he was admitted to a private room. I had brought him a change of pajamas, since we both expected him to come home tonight,” she motioned with her head towards a grocery bag to the side, near the foot of the bed.
We all looked at grandpa at that point – I was trying not to cry, as I felt my heart shattering, and I knew my dad was fighting tears as well as he stood by the foot of grandpas bed, remembering his mothers last days with cancer, and seeing the same thing happen to his father. Quietly, we all stood by him and waited. He never woke up, but he squeezed my hand at one point – I think it was his way of letting me know he loved me, and knew I was there.
I leaned down and kissed his cheek, and whispered that it was okay to go, and I loved him. Not long after, he passed peacefully. The doctor told us later that the tumor on his pancreas had grown in a direction that wasn’t able to be picked up on the ultrasounds, so they hadn’t known until it was too late.
After losing my grandpa, I felt lost for a long time, and sometimes I still do. I dove into trying to find organizations, charities, anything that would help bring more attention to pancreatic cancer and trying to find something to hold onto and grasp – a reason, a balm for the pain and hopelessness I felt.
That was in 2006. I hadn’t ever really forgotten about St Jude, but other than a private donation (since fundraising wasn’t really something I had any idea about), there wasn’t much I could do to support them at the time. Years passed, and friends had family who survived cancer diagnoses, or lost loved ones, and my heart broke for them.
Then in early 2013, I called my parents to catch up on some things, and my dad was very distracted and didn’t seem to want to talk. When I asked to talk to mom, he said she wasn’t available but wouldn’t give me details. Frustrated, I asked him to have her call me back the next day. When mom called two days later, my world spun out of control again.
She had uterine cancer. She had had to have a full hysterectomy (which was why she had been unavailable to talk – she had stayed overnight after surgery), and even at stage one, it had begun to spread to the muscle so part of that had to be removed as well. I couldn’t breathe. Terrified, and 2500 miles away living in Las Vegas, I felt helpless. What would have happened if it had been further along? Would they have been able to catch it in time? It still haunts me, thinking about what might have been.
Mom finally opened up to me about the family history on her side of the family, and uterine cancer. So now, I have had to wrestle with the difficult decision myself – at 33, do I opt for surgery that could potentially save my life in the future, or do I gamble with my own life, and hope that I will be the first one in three (maybe four) generations to not have uterine cancer on my mothers side? To me, the only option was clear. Surgery, and genetic testing for other cancers is really what I need to do now to safeguard my future health.
Moms journey with cancer didn’t end there. In late 2016, when she went for her yearly mammogram, they found a lump in her left breast. She went into surgery in early 2017, and they were able to remove the tumor with no complications. We were lucky. Six weeks of aggressive radiation later (4 times a week), she was told she was in remission.
Around Christmas 2017 though, mom began to feel similar pain that had been a symptom of her breast cancer just a year before – this time it was in the other breast. I went numb, I was terrified. My dad needed me though to be strong – I could tell that her two previous rounds with cancer had taken a toll on his health, even if he didn’t talk about it (mom had complained that he was “so helpless” when she was recovering, and I had to remind her he had watched both of his parents pass of cancer before he was 50). Mom seemed resigned to accept the worst, but on Christmas Eve we got the best news we could have asked for. There was no cancer – just a pulled muscle in an awkward spot. We breathed sighs of relief, and celebrated.Now, mom is s till in remission – thankfully.
During all of this, in 2015 I discovered PLAYLIVE. I was ecstatic – with all the pain and sadness I had seen that comes with cancer, finding a way to fundraise for St Jude gave me hope. With the developments and research they’re engineering, the survivability rate of cancer in children in the US is over 80% and worldwide it’s only around 20%, and they are working on a global initiative to spread their work to every other country in the world that they can, and won’t stop until they reach 100%. I fundraise for them – for that hope. For future generations, that maybe…maybe even just $1 that I’m able to fundraise or donate will make the difference with a breakthrough. Being at the Summit, hearing the stories of how St Jude has helped bring hope to other streamers who fundraise for the hospital inspired me, and brought a lot of tears. It also made me want to keep fighting, to keep going. Never give up hope, because your help matters.
During the entire month of May, I am fundraising for StJudePLAYLIVE. My goal is ambitious, almost 3 times what I’ve raised in previous years. Even if all you can give is $1, or just sharing the link, your support is appreciated. Thank you.