Prologue

What is it like to have cancer?

Prologue

Life is short. That’s a well-known fact most people still take for granted. I know I did when I was young and naïve. That didn’t last long. I got the cancer diagnosis a few months after my fourteenth birthday. I had noticed my hip looked bigger, but I assumed that I was finally getting some curves, that I was finally becoming a woman. Later on, a year and a half to be exact, I found out that I was actually watching a life-threatening tumor grow,watching my own body slowly turn against me and go haywire as my cells deformed and became what is known as Ewing’s Sarcoma. 

Ewing’s Sarcoma happens to be a rare form bone cancer only discovered a decade or two before I was born. I guess I’m just lucky, right? Basically about a hundred children in the country are diagnosed with this specific form of cancer a year. That’s about one in three million people. 

Not only that, but only forty of these select children are girls. 

40 girls.. There were 40 people on my junior high track team. Hardly more than 40 people in my previous church. I fought for about ten months. It was ten months of pain, sickness, and torture. Months full of people pitying me and treating me like some fragile porcelain doll they needed to “handle with care”. I hate pity. 

Those ten months were full of incessant nausea, fevers, pills, shots, and drugs. I had dozens of emotions streaming through me at once�"sadness, worry, guilt for what I’d put my family through, hopelessness, weakness, depression, fear, and loneliness. I just wanted to die already.

I hardly looked at myself in the mirror because what I saw was the most repulsive, disgusting-looking thing on the planet. My skin was yellow from lack of blood, my skin and nails were peeling off because all of my cells were dying. I had no eyebrows or eyelashes, my lips were colorless, I had no hair, and my ribs were standing out. I was basically just skin and bone. I couldn’t bear to even think about what I looked like, much less actually look at myself. I realized how short life really is, and how in the blink of an eye everything can change. I mean, who at fourteen ever thinks it’s a possibility to have cancer or die?

People tell me every day that I am a warrior�"that I’m the bravest person they know�"but I feel nothing of the sorts. I was just sick and hoping to stay alive. You say I’m a warrior? I’m a soldier? I’m not brave or selfless. I never fought for anything but my own life.  

I’ve learned to not take life for granted. Every year lived is another defying the odds. I’ve never really understood why people hate getting old. They are alive. Many people don’t get the chance to live even half as long as the elderly. I know I won’t.

My name is Aleyna Baldwin, and it has now been almost four years since my last treatment. Four years of remission and thinking I’ll be fine. Four years of planning what to do with the rest of my life. Four years thinking that horrid medicine had saved me from dying, and that I was finished with hospitals. 

Well… now I’m back. Not for cancer treatment. But because that very same treatment that saved my life is now killing me. Or more particularly: killing my heart. 

Author's Note

I would like any critique you will give me! I appreciate it.

Reviews

[L. Michelle Corp]

To be critical, may I suggest employing a thesaurus? Your message is strong and weighs heavily on the heart; I believe with improved vocabulary (swapping out ordinary words for more specific descriptions) would take this piece to a whole new level. Placement of commas (I'm certainly not perfect with grammar either) should be carefully considered. This has great potential to be a work of near perfection. The most important thing I can tell you is to consider each word with great care. Be more concise, making each little word you use invaluable and paramount to your story. So far after reading, I think my reaction was what you were going for. I feel suffering, gratitude, and sympathetic torment for the author. I encourage you to also employ poetic symbolism when describing your plight. Metaphors, things like that.

I applaud you for your bold disclosure of such a personal and devastating plight. I will be reading more of your work. Thanks for sharing.

[Jane P.]

Wow, great start and nice use of research. Clear characterisation and great use of narrative voice.

Just going to ask if you could make the font bigger? I had to zoom in on my laptop!

Really liked the juxtaposition between thinking she was getting curves and the reality of the situation. The comical/light hearted nature is really what drew me into your story.

You've created a really well-structured prologue, which obviously maintains the intention of drawing in the reader to consume more chapters. Well, that's exactly what you've done. Now I've gotta keep reading!