When I first realized something was wrong, my entire body turned to cold stone--not because of the thought of what it could be because of the fact that people would have to look at certain parts of my body that I wasn’t comfortable with. A couple days before Thanksgiving, I discovered a rubbery, muscle-like lump had formed on my hip. I had no clue what it could be, but it felt as if I had severe growing pains. It hurt to walk and stand for long periods of time, which forced me me sit down all the time. I didn’t want to scare my grandma on Thanksgiving, so I anticipated for the holiday to pass to tell her that I needed a doctor.

I shuffled into her room and muttered, “Tita, there’s a lump on my leg.”  

She asked, “Where?”

“It’s… on my hip,” I mumbled as I gestured to the spot. She wanted to inspect and feel; but I was still uncomfortable with that, so I only let her feel the lump. Afterwards, she tried calling into Mercy Hospital which was terribly complicated, and they had no mercy on us. Finally, she scheduled an appointment for me that day. Walking even a short distance felt like my leg was being pulled off.

My grandmother drove me to the appointment. I struggled through the automatic sliding doors into the warm, empty clinic. I limped over to an open chair and thumped down into the slick fabric-like chairs.

Waiting for only a few minutes, the nurse called for my name. I walked through the beige door and hopped on to the scale and stumbled over to the next waiting room. Since there weren’t any doctors at the time, a nurse examined me to figure out the problem. She asked, “Do you want her to leave?” shifting towards my grandma, and I nodded. After poking and prodding the lump, the nurse decided it was a swollen lymph node. She sent us away with a prescription note and a drained “Have a nice day.” That wasn’t the end of it.

After a couple of days, my mom returned from her trip to Texas, and we went to a doctor to make sure that it was just a swollen lymph node. This time all of us packed into the car and went to Promedica. I continued the same routine of lingering and staggering from each room to the next. Instead of a nurse, my family doctor addressed me and felt the lump. After a few light pushes, she speculated that it was most likely a hernia, which seemed odd because I don’t do much, if any, physical activity. Since she thought it was a hernia, she tried to ram it back in. I let out a choked cry of pain as she tried to shove the bulging muscle back in. To make sure, she had me sent down to another waiting room to get CT scan.

After my CT scan, we traveled home only to return the next day to talk about what they found. The next morning came and off we were off again to what was now becoming our second home. My mom dropped off my grandma and me at the hospital entrance, so we wouldn’t have to trudge through mountains of slush and snow the winter brought. Waiting till my mom came through the sliding glass doors, I sat in a chair.

We all walked down the hall for what seemed like the millionth time at my sluggish pace. We entered the usual waiting room, sat for ten minutes, answered to my name, walked into another room, and waited again. Finally, after getting situated for fifteen minutes in an almost grimly silent room, my doctor emerged through the door. Her lips and tongue formed the usual greeting sentence as she sat down on her stool. Tapping keys into the computer, she brought up my images, “So it’s not a hernia. It’s a lymph node. Several actually,” she added.  Pointing to the black and white Rorschach test that was my body. “There is the main one that you can feel under the skin. Here are some others,” she commented whilst shifting the image.

My mom inquired, “What’s the cause of all of these?”

“Well, there are two possibilities. Now I’m only telling you this so you know what all it could be. It could either be an infection, or it could be lymphoma,”

I thought, That’s cancer. I could die. I’m gonna die, but I tried staying calm as I listen to her explain what lymphoma was and what it does to the body. As my head started to spin, I became severely alarmed. I was going to lose my friends, my boyfriend, my mom, and my grandma. I’m going to lose everything, including my life. I’m going to die.

After the whole explanation, I walked out of the room, and I couldn’t keep it together. I felt like I could cry enough to fill up a room like Alice in Wonderland. It felt as if I were nowhere, and everything looked like a blur of nothing that was worth my attention. As I cried, my mom joined in while we meandered out of the hospital. We drove home in tears being held back with all their might.

As soon as we arrived home, the flood gates weren’t just opened; they exploded. Even my grandma began crying, and I’ve never seen her cry. It was hugging and crying for a while, a long while. My mom asked, “Do you want Phillip to come over here?” and I told her, “No, I don’t want to worry him in the case that it’s only an infection. I’m not putting him through that type of stress.” My grandma went to go get food for me while my mom went outside to smoke a cigarette. I sat on the couch feeling nothing. I was numb. When my mom came back in the house, I wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to feel anything because it would be too much to deal with.

The doctor said to come back later that day to see a specialist to figure out which ailment had been thrown upon me. Again, we went back to the hospital. On the way there, I listened to the song “Hard Times” by Paramore and started crying again because the lyrics were talking about wanting to die and how hard life can be. This time at the palace of sickness and death, we had to go upstairs. Minding the fact, I had been using a wheelchair the entire time since walking was becoming utterly impossible. The extremely uncomfortable hospital’s wheelchairs featured oddly curved backs, like one of Dr. Seuss's illustrations, that would give the healthiest spine scoliosis in no longer than a minute. My mom wheeled me into an elevator, sending me off to have my death sentence carved in stone. The elevator doors slid open, and she wheeled me into the next waiting room.

The entire room looked a moldy green and an ugly, sad brown color. An elderly couple walked into the doors on the other side that led to another patient room. We waited for about five minutes till my name had been called for the trillionth time. Rolled along the linoleum floors to my drab room, the specialist came in. He greeted me in the nicest way he knew to greet someone who could have cancer. He became the grim reaper all dressed in black scrubs, and he would decide if I was to live or die. Of course, he had to look at and feel the lump again like every other doctor who had examined me. This time I had to be in a hospital robe which was too revealing for my comfort. He came back in after I had changed and had me lay back on the table, so he could inspect me. I sat in a frozen up-right position, making sure I saw what was happening. “Since it hurts, that’s a very good sign. Lymphoma wouldn’t hurt. It would be a painless mass under your skin,” he said.

“That means I don’t have cancer, right?”

“Most likely not, it’s most likely a simple infection of the lymph nodes.” All of a sudden, my thoughts became explosions: I’m not sick! I’m ok, I’m gonna be fine! I won’t lose my mom, my grandma, Phillip, my friends! I’m going to live!

My thoughts were interrupted by the doctor uttering, “You just need to keep taking your medicine consistently, use a heating pad, and you should be fine.”

The amount of relief I felt is absolutely indescribable. The weight of the entire world had been lifted off my shoulders. I dressed myself back into my regular clothes and said to my mom, “After a while, I’ll be joking around and saying, ‘Remember the time I had cancer?’” That was the most humor we had had in awhile.

Driving home from there, for the last time, was the best ride home I had and will ever have. It became the most incredible ride of my life, simply because I was finally able to relax. We grabbed food from McDonalds and lay on the couches, hoping to never move again. I asked my mom if I could watch House M.D. and she asked flabbergasted, “You want to watch a medical show, after all that?”

“You have a point,” I replied. She settled for something on the tv, while I watched Youtube. When I decided to go to sleep, I fell asleep immediately. The next morning, I lay on the couch, staring at the velvet fabric that keeps all the finger painting-like art and felt my head being engulfed by a goose feather pillow. All the soft, soothing sensations of pillows and blankets swallowed my body. I lay there for a long, long time just thankful to be alive.