I am strong believer in God...who created me, died and rose for me, and is still looking after me. I have been raised by the best parents anyone could ever have, being huge examples in my life and role models for me. I have a brother and sister, who I love very much! Not to mention a butt-load of friends that I'm very grateful for...I like to play bass and plan on transferring to guitar soon, because I like to do wierd solo/harmonizing things that I'm limitted on with the bass. I like video games, I love to read, and I love to chill with my buddies! People say I'm strange...and wierd...and twisted...BUT WHO ISN'T? I have a pitiful cat, Rupert, who has claimed my room as his room...He's missin half his hair and I think he has really bad arthritis in his hind legs (that might be due to the fact that I dropped him down the stairs when I was tiny). He's pretty old...about 12 or 13 years. I think he's gonna croak on my bed...so I'll be changing my sheets and flippin my matress when that happens. eeeeeewwwwwww...Um...that's about it...OK...I am a cancer survivor...It all started about two years ago, around July. I was having this sharp pain in my guts...I can't describe it...let's just say I can handle painful things really well...but this was unbearable. So my parents took me to St. Joe's Hospital, and I was checked in under the idea of having appendicits. So they gave me a CT Scan (the first out of about 50 that I would have later), to make sure that it was my appendix. This guy comes up and says,"Yeah, we believe it's your appendix flaring up...so we'll have that surgically removed. But also, we found an unkown mass inside you." So my mom's flippin' out, and getting pretty upset. I'm still bummed that I didn't get to go to camp, so this was like icing on the poop-cake. So we get the next surgery scheduled (tumor removal). And note: a tumor is not necessarily cancerous...sometimes it's just a lump of tissue that just doesn't belong there...but cancer was still an issue. So I have a 3 hour surgery and that was a blast, the tumor was bigger than my fist...so it was pretty big. The doctors send it away to be checked out for the possibility of cancer...and we wait. So I'm at my grandma's condo a couple months later, and my mom gets a call telling us that my tumor WAS cancerous. So I had to have a bone marrow biopsy, which checks for cancer in the bones. That was fun... they take a needle a little smaller than a straw, push it into your hip-bone and extract some bone marrow. The anaesthetist said that I could be given anaesthetics(konk me ou), or they could keep giving me pain killer...I said,"KNOCK ME OUT!" So after various scans, having radioative stuff injected in me, and all that fun stuff, the doctors discovered that the cancer was all confined in the tumor. IT HADN'T SPREAD! So I still have to go have CT Scans and blood work to check up on things. And I have a butt-load of funny stories from this entire experience.
Why am I telling you all this? To prove that there is God and that He watches over us. Think about...I missed out at camp, but what if I had those pains and all that AT camp? I also look back at when we were going to the hospital for my appendix...the pain was subsiding a little and I told my mom and dad that I felt a little better and that we could go home. What if we did, and that tumor was never found in the Scan? The cancer would have spread, and I would be in serious trouble. Now tell me...how can you hear such a crazy story and not believe in God. This was NOT luck at all...it was a life changer for me. Not only did I realize how much I had been neglecting God in my life, but it also opened my heart and desire towards what I want to be when I'm done with college! I want to work in the medical field! For now, my plans are to go to Cedarville for their Nursing Program. I want to work in Pediatrics because I love kids and I love to make people laugh and help them at the same time. I'm also leaning towards a career as an anaesthetist, radiologist, surgeon, oncologist, and possibly a job in nuclear medicine. There are so many ideas coming through my head...I don't know. I just want to thank my family and friends for helping me throughout this and keeping me strong. I want to thank all the amazing people at both St. Joe's and U of M that have poked at me and prodded at me, and were just pleasantly cool as they did their jobs (special thanks to my oncologists and the people down in radiology)! And finally, for my Lord and Savior for looking after me and pointing many life changing things to me in this moment of my life!
