This is about something bad that has happened to me that I have learned from.
When you see a child with cancer, what do you say to yourself? How do you react? When I would see a child with cancer, I would think to myself, “That is so horrible. I cannot believe that this could happen to a child.” or “Look how say they look. It must be so hard for them.” I would have never thought that something like this could happen to my little sister, that something like this could change all of our lives forever.
I had just got off work and walked in to the house to Hailey, my little sister, crying and screaming. I sat in the chair and I told her, “Hailey be quiet, if you can’t be quiet then go to your room.” My mom called the doctor and told him that Hailey was in major pain. The doctor could hear her screaming in the background, so he told my mom to take her straight to the hospital. After a minute, Hailey went to her room and stopped crying. It took my mom a couple of minutes to get ready to leave. When my mom when to Hailey’s room to get her and she was sleeping. She had been sleeping a lot the past few days. My mom asked if someone would go with her, so I told her that I would go with her.
When we got to McCullough Hide Hospital, it took forever for them to take us back. Our insurance would not pay for a C. A. T. scan. They doctor at the hospital know that they needed to see her abdomen to know what was causing the pain that she was having in her side. Hailey was quickly taken to have and ultrasound done. We were sent back to our room to wait. Within a few minutes, the doctor was back. She took my mom out in the hallway. She told her that they found a mass in the left side of my sister’s abdomen. She tried so hard no to say tumor because they were not for sure and they didn’t want to scare my mom, but it slipped and she said, “Yes, it is a tumor, we need to know which Children’s Hospital you want to go to?” My mom was speechless, she didn’t know what to say. She told the doctor that she wanted to take Hailey to Dayton Children’s Hospital.
I can remember how much Hailey cried because they couldn’t find a vein to put her I.V. in, she would cry “Kake, make them stop.” I wanted to stop them for her because I felt her pain, I knew it hurt. The nurse stuck the needle in and then she was trying to move the needle around while it was insider her arm. This made me so sick. Hailey tried to fight her to get her off of her, so I had to hold her down. After about four tries, she brought in an older woman who didn’t look very nice. The same nurse who had been trying to put in the I.V., tried once more, but this time she had the older women holding my sister down. This mean, heartless woman yelled at my sister. She said, “You need to stop this, there is no reason for you to be screaming like this.” I just wanted to tell her “Shut your mouth because this baby has been poked five times and had a needle digging around in her arm.” This broke my heart. How in the world could someone who knew this child was sick, be so mean? This all happened while my mom was talking to the doctor while we were still at McCullough Hide Hospital.
My mom called me out to the hallway where she was standing with the doctor and told me, “Hailey has a large tumor in the left side of her abdomen. I need you to go tell everyone that we are going to Dayton Children’s Hospital.” I didn’t comprehend this for a minute. I just looked at her like she was crazy, like she was speaking a different language. I took a second to think and then I asked her where her phone was. I went outside to call my grandma.
I said, “Hailey has a tumor, and she is going to Dayton Children’s Hospital. Mom told to call everyone, I don’t know who everyone is, who am I supposed to call?”
My grandma told me, “Just calm down and I will call everyone.”
I wasn’t crying at that moment, I was just in shock. I told her that I was going to call my aunt. By the time I called my aunt, I was a mess. My heart felt like it had been ripped out on my chest. My whole body just broke down. My aunt told me that it was going to be okay and that it might not even be cancerous.
When I got back inside to the little white room, my mom was in the bed with my sister crying. My sister knew at this point that she had a tumor and she knew that it could be cancerous. She knew what all of this meant because she has seen people go through cancer. She had seen my great aunt with cancer and she had also seen a little girl of her buss go through it. I heard my baby sister say to my mom, “Mommy, why are you crying? I am going to be okay.” This was one of the strongest words I have ever heard a child say. She was reassuring us that she was going to get through this with flying colors. The only negative thing we heard out of her mouth was, “Am I going to lose my hair?” This really upset us, because last year, before we knew she had cancer, the little girl on her bus had cancer and didn’t have any hair and everyone made fun of her. My sister was the only one who would stand up for her. She would say, “Don’t make fun of her, it’s not her fault!”
My mom asked me to drive the van home. As I drove I had a mental breakdown. I found myself driving 85 miles per hour of a back country road in the rain. I was crying so hard that I couldn’t see anything, even if I wasn’t crying I still would have been able to focus on the road because my head was spinning. I felt so dizzy. I was so distracted that I almost wrecked about five times. At the time I just wished that God would take me instead, that if I died, Hailey might be spared. I just prayed the whole way home. I wanted Got to just make her better, even if that meant that he would take me, so be it. When I got home I couldn’t talk to anyone, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t move.
As soon as I got home, we drove to Dayton Children’s Hospital. My mom came out into the waiting room about ten minutes after we got there. She told us that the doctor told us to expect the worst. The doctor said that she felt her lymph nodes and they were swollen. I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping for air. It felt like someone had just turned off the oxygen. I wanted to scream. I asked my mom, “What does it mean when your lymph nodes are swollen?” and my mom said, “You die.” I felt like someone stabbed me in the heart.
Later we found out that the tumor had been imbedded into her kidney. Within a couple of days they took out the tumor and her kidney. It took the longest two weeks of my life for the pathology report to come back. They had to inspect it very close because they usually catch this cancer before the child is four and most of the four year olds are in the worst stage. When we actually found out what stage of cancer she was in, we were taking her for her first chemo treatment. They oncology doctor told us that she was only in stage 2 out of 5 stages. Stage 2 meant that the tumor didn’t travel anywhere else in her body. Our prayers were answered. She was going to be okay.
She is on her sixth chemo treatment and she has just stared losing her hair and she is still as strong as ever. She can run and play just like she always has. Hailey also has a huge self esteem. She isn’t worried about what other people thing about her. She knows that she is sick and that’s the only reason she looks they way she does and she isn’t scared.
I have realized through this whole thing that my family means so much to me. They aren’t there to have someone to fight with, they are there for someone to lean on during hard times. I have also learned that no matter what life throws at you, you can always overcome it. My sister is my hero. She is the strongest person I know. She isn’t afraid of anything anyone says to her. Even though she is my little sister, she is the one I look up too. She might want to grow up to be just like me, but I want to grow up to be just like her. In a way I feel like this was supposed to happen in order to help us grow closer as a family.
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