White doors. Metal doors. Glass doors. They all led to the same place for me. They all led to needles, tubes, and, most importantly, plastic, kidney-shaped pans. I had cancer. This was all just a part of my treatment.
After undergoing treatment for my leukemia many times over, I was pretty used to the routine by now. This was my fourth relapse. I was only fifteen. I was diagnosed at four years and had battled this disease for eleven years now. I was not only completely bald, but I had to be the sickest patient in the ward.
Yet my willpower was stronger than anyone’s I’ve ever known. I was determined to beat this disease once and for all. I was going to do it.
I lay in the uncomfortable hospital bed after a particularly nasty bout of vomiting after my latest round of chemo. My mom just ran to get the nurse so she could clean out the kidney dish again. I glanced over at the empty bed beside me. Since I was only in the hospital for long enough to have my treatment, I wasn’t put in a private room. From the time I had gotten here two hours ago and begun my treatment, three other cancer patients had been put in that bed. But as soon as they heard and saw me projectile vomiting, they immediately asked for a different room.
But I was used to it by now. Everyone I was fortunate enough to meet was naturally repelled by my shiny head. Even when I was at home and neighbors with children would visit to see how I was doing, they would be gone in five minutes. Most times, they wouldn’t even set a foot over the threshold of our house. They didn’t want their kids catching cancer, even though it wasn’t possible to “catch” it.
My mom came back, looking as tired as ever. Sometimes I thought I was doing better than she was.
But after the nurse left when she finished cleaning my kidney dish and my own face because I was so weak I could barely lift my hand, my mother hugged me.
I love it when she hugs me. It makes me feel so safe in this world of pain. It makes me able to stand throwing up for days on end. It makes me happy. It makes me feel loved.
As usual, I cried in her warm embrace. She whispered soothing words in my ear and that stupid dead weight of dread that had taken to settling in the pit of my stomach before and during chemotherapy lifted and flew away.
Only a mother’s hug can do that when you’re in the hell hole I’m in now. But her hugs will help me beat this thing. And they did.