WARNING LONG POST!
Ok, so there is no getting around the leukemia subject anymore. So far I avoided it in my blog. But as I hinted several days ago I was diagnosed with leukemia at 13, almost exactly 10 years ago. This anniversary lead me to think about the stupid cancer more again. I will do a blog series about it once this challenge is done. I felt like I should write it down forever, but never got around to do so.
To answer today's challenge I need to give you a first glimpse in my world back then. I was one very sick girl and one day while recieving more chemicals than I ever thought were good for me I met a very sick boy. OOOOH! I never felt inclined to make friends in my prison called hospital since I mostly spent my time sleeping, vomitting and driving my family crazy. Usually in this sequence. Sometimes they offered to do crafts in the afternoon where one could meet other kids, but crafts and me....does not work. However, J was a different case. We met and became best friends. Whenever we felt up to it, we visited each other's rooms. We talked about everything. Our families could only stay during the day, during the night we were alone. During our conversations we made plans what we wanted to do with our lives once we got out of the hospital and he was the only one I talked to about dying. This was probably because he was the only one who could completely understand what I was feeling since he was walking the same path. We also made up the vomit charts (what not to eat and what to eat during chemo.)
EAT: 1. apple sauce because it comes out easily 2. Banana but chew carefully 3. small noodles with a lot of sauce since they don get stuck
DON't EAT: 1.gummi bears since they get stuck in your throat or even nose. hurts! 2. chicken and fries (basicly any meat) because it is hard to get out and the smell makes you even more sick 3. fruit (except banana) since they get stuck and they burn like crazy in your throat
One day I sat in his room and we talked about the boy and girl thing. We both agreed that we never felt romantic about each other. He was just a VERY good friend. Still, he wondered how it felt to be kissed. He admitted that he had thought about it a lot recently and then, without me expecting it, he asked me to kiss him. I agreed. I can't say it was the best kiss ever, but it was nice :) We never kissed again. Our nurses would have freaked out if they had known we were basicly exchanging germs.
On my last day of chemo he came to my room (he had already finished his last round) and gave me a huge hug and said we would start living again now.
However, while I slowly started to participate in my normal live again, his cancer came back. His fight started anew. I went to visit him as often as I could and felt gulity for being healthy each time. J fought as hard as he could. He got a cell transplantation which meant that nobody could touch him for about a month. But after several months it became apparent that everything the doctors had to offer would not help. He was given 3 months to live. My heart broke that day. I told my mother that I wanted to die instead of him and I meant it. Living without him was not an option.
During his last weeks my parents took me to visit him every weekend (2 hour drive one way). It was, without a doubt, the most horrible time of my life. I. could. not. loose. him. Before he died he asked me to take care of his parents, whatever this meant. And I told him that I wanted to name my first son after him. I still want and it was one of the first things I discussed with Hendrik. He made me promise that I would still live my life without him and wait a very long time until I came to see him. He promised to watch over me until then. The day he died I lay on my bed crying all day. The pain was too much to bear.
At the next scan I did not care about my results. If they had shown that my cancer was back, I would have happily taken it. While my heart does not heal and the pain will never subside I learnt to live with it. I visit his parents on his birthday and write emails. I once asked them if they did not hate me for being alive instead of him. They replied that while it hurt them to see me and makes their heart ache for the things J is not allowed to experience, they always regarded our cases as two different ones. They said they were thankful that at least I got to survive.
Sorry, this blog is a bit (a tiny bit) off topic, but I could not adequately tell you about my first kiss without all the other information and I wanted to complete J's story tonight.
It's never goodbye, it's always see you later!
Thanks for sharing your story! I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm interested to read part 2.
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