Elephants and Tea - September 2019 - 28

Survivorship

CHILDHOOD CANCER AWARENESS MONTH

was not like the other kids, my
grandma once told me. Her old cat,
Cinder, always preferred me to my
siblings and cousins, because I was
gentle and I wasn't constantly grabbing at him. The Christmas after I turned two,
which was the Christmas after I was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, my other
grandparents got me a cat named Daphne. I
had her for about 5 years before she ran away,
never to be seen again. I remember waiting
expectantly at my grandparents' and the look
on my dad's face when he came back from
searching and told me that he just couldn't
find her. I was disappointed and upset, but
I didn't cry. I was seven years old, and I just
hoped that wherever Daphne was, that she
was happy.
Empathy for pets quickly morphed into
empathy for people, both real and imagined. After my cancer treatment protocol,
after viral encephalitis damaged my brain
stem and left me with physical disabilities,

Not Like the Other Kids
hearing loss, and a speech impairment, I was
rendered an observer of life, rather than an
active participant. As a child, I read a lot,
preferring to explore make-believe worlds
where I could actually BE the characters
instead of myself. And I feel like I can relate
a lot to others, because of this. I loved classics like "The Secret Garden," and "A Little
Princess," both by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In "The Secret Garden," a bedridden,
fearful boy is healed by the "magic" in his
deceased mother's (secret) garden. I wanted
to be healed too, in body and soul both. And
I looked for stories written about kids with
cancer, sick kids, both true and fictional.
And maybe in reading stories like this and
in empathizing with the characters, I started
the process of healing in my own way.
One night in October 2010, I couldn't
sleep, and I got up and went to my computer. I ended up googling neuroblastoma,

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Elephants and Tea - September 2019

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