How Cancer Affected Me Is a St Jude Role Reversal Story

Everyone is touched by cancer in some way during our lives.

I grew up knowing about it at a very early age. I was only 7 years old when my Grandmother was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

I watched everything she had to go through, well, as much as a 7 year old gets exposed to. I watched her unable to eat. I watched her lose her hair. I watched her try to hide in the bathroom from how intense her chemotherapy treatments were.

I watched her come home in the back of an ambulance to stay.

I watched her slowly wither away within a hospital bed that was set up in her downstairs den.

I watched her slip into a coma.

I remember saying my last goodbyes and last I love you's before going off to 3rd grade.

She was only 63.

In the lives of those at St. Jude, it's a role reversal from what I experienced. It's the family getting the news that their 7 year old has cancer. It's the 7 year old that goes through everything my Grandmother went through.

It shouldn't happen at 63 and it most certainly shouldn't happen at 7.

The beauty of St. Jude is that they're constantly working around the clock to strengthen their research and finding a cure. It doesn't matter if it's three o'clock in the afternoon or three o'clock in the morning, they're working. They don't and won't give up. Even better, the research they come up with, all of their findings? They share around the world in hopes that one day, we won't have to research around the clock. In hopes that one day, there won't have to be a family getting the news that their loved one has cancer because there won't be a cancer.

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