My Sister's Cancer:

Introduction:

As a young boy growing up with three brothers, it meant the world to have a loving and caring older sister. She was seven years older than me, and I always looked up to her as a role model. She took care of me and dedicated a portion of her daily time to play or teach me things like the alphabet before I even started going to school. At the time, I never realized how blessed I was to have a caring sister nor did I realize that my time with her was painfully ephemeral. People often say you don’t appreciate the true value of what you have until it’s no longer in your possession, and I couldn’t agree more. Dalal, my sister, was diagnosed with a cancer known as Lymphoma when she was only 13 years old. She valiantly fought the malady with all the power she could muster, but ultimately lost the war after a two and a half year battle; a battle that violently stirred emotions and changed lives. I watched as she slowly faded away from my daily life during the time of her illness. She was too often hospitalized and I lost my quality time with her. When things got too bad, I’d end up not seeing her days or weeks at a time, but it all fell apart when she passed away minutes after 12:00am on December 24, 2008.

It was hard to comprehend such a devastating event as a nine year old child. The shockwave was so potent that it left me unable to express my pain; I became a ticking bomb filled with incomprehensible sorrow. In fact, when we were greeted at the airport in Saudi Arabia (our home country) by our relatives just one day after Dalal’s death, everyone was lamenting and barely holding themselves together, but my emotions were suppressed. I childishly ran to them shouting and grinning “We’re Back!” A few days later, when the ticking was no more and my emotions detonated, it left a gargantuan crater in my heart that sunk me into depression. Whenever such a tragedy occurs, it is never the best option to give in to depression; a lesson I learned the hard way. While it may not be prominent at the time, there is a path for self-reform and redemption that only opens up when faced with life changing catastrophes. It took me about eight years after the tragedy to realize this. When I look back on my accomplishments and future aspirations, they often go back to the experiences I had at the time of Dalal’s illness. They ultimately reshaped me into a person I never envisioned myself to be. What people may not realize is that when a family member has cancer, it will have a permanent impact on every single member of the family; an impact that has the potential to completely change one’s life, and that was the case with me.

I am inspired to tell my story to demonstrate what it is like to have someone so close to your heart fight against cancer. I want to shed light on what it’s like to cope with the experience. Many families struggle greatly when one of their members has cancer, and often times they may not know much about the disease or treatment modalities. Family support is a crucial psychological factor in the treatment process and has a critical impact in determining whether or not the treatment can be successful. This story documents my family's personal experience of moving from Saudi Arabia to the United States in hopes to cure my sister of cancer. I hope that readers of this personal story will become familiar with the nature of the disease, the treatment used against it, and the magnitude of its impacts on family individuals.