Angela did not keep a diary of her
experience, which she regrets. But this is what she remembers from
that time.
It was June 1995 and Angela was a
junior at Arlington High School. It was a couple weeks away from the
end of the school year and she was looking forward to the summer.
She had plans to hang out with her friends and was looking forward to
going to an R.E.M. concert with her brother and sisters.
Angela was feeling a little bit bloated
one day, nothing major. But she just really didn't want to go to
school that day. She told her mom she was feeling bloated and
that she had an upset stomach. Her mom let her stay home from
school. While her mom was at work, Angela used this as an
opportunity to lie on the couch, workout to some exercise tapes (the
old VHS kind which she still has a pile of cluttering up our house),
and watch some soap operas.
Angela's mom came home from work and
asked her how she was feeling. Angela didn't really want to go back
to school the next day so she decided to milk this a bit more even
though she wasn't in major pain. She told her mom she was still
bloated and that her stomach still hurts.
Angela's mother, maybe being a bit
overly cautious, decided to bring her to the pediatrician in
Arlington much to Angela's dismay. The pediatrician felt Angela's
stomach, pressed on it in different places, and privately told
Angela's mom that she felt something in Angela's stomach, and then
told them that they need to go to Children's Hospital in Boston for
further diagnosis. Angela wasn't told anything at this point other
than she needs to go to the hospital.
Angela wasn't sure if it was just her
nervousness upon hearing she had to go to the hospital or if it was
real pain, but as time went on she truly did start hurting a bit and
she was still feeling bloated.
Angela, along with her mother and
father, went to Children's Hospital. After waiting a few hours she
was brought to the emergency room. The emergency room doctors took
turns feeling Angela's stomach and then she had an x-ray taken. The
doctors still haven't told Angela what was going on at this point.
They did tell her that she would have
to stay overnight. Angela got really nervous when they told her
that. She was moved from the emergency room to a regular room at
Children's Hospital.
The next morning, all of Angela's
siblings came to the hospital. A biopsy was performed because the
x-ray did reveal a mass in her stomach. A few hours later, two
oncologists came into Angela's room and sat on the bed and told her
that there's a mass in her stomach and that they performed a biopsy
to see if they can find some more information. They told her the
mass was about the size of a football and that the biopsy revealed
that the mass was malignant. Angela, thinking that the word
malignant meant the non-cancerous-type, smiled at this diagnosis.
But then they continued to tell her that she has Burkitt's
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Due to the size of the tumor and its potential to burst if it grew any larger which would likely have fatal consequences, they
would have to quickly begin a very strict chemotherapy regiment to combat the cancer.
She was then told the potential side effects
of the chemotherapy which included nausea, vomiting, fever, hair loss, and they continued on with the list. But all Angela could hear was "hair loss". That's when the seriousness of the
diagnosis finally hit her and she started crying. The possibility of hair loss was a difficult
thing for her to accept as would surely be the case for pretty much any teenage girl. Angela was
told that they could not take the mass out by surgery. Only chemotherapy could hopefully shrink the mass.
Almost as quickly as she went from a girl trying to take some time off from school to a girl diagnosed with a potentially deadly disease, chemotherapy would begin
a couple days later...
NEXT - Part 2 - The Treatment
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