Like Any Other Night

It was like any other school night, came home from soccer practice, showered and locked myself in my room for the rest of the night trying to finish the piles of homework I had to complete for the following day. But something was different about tonight; my mom and dad had called my sister, brother and I out to the living room to talk. I was unsure what this talk was going to be about, my palms began to sweat and a rerun of last week went through my head, trying to figure out what I could have done wrong. Was it that I forgot to feed the dogs or was it that I didn’t put my dishes in the dish washer, it wasn’t report card week was it, or was it about the fight my siblings and I had at breakfast and dinner each day, did somebody in the family pass, numerous thoughts were running through my head as I sat on the couch to brace myself for the news my parents were about to tell me or yell at me for.

This very night I experienced a life changing event. My mom had explained to my sister, brother, and I that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. I was astonished, I had no words and all I could do was let tears fall. She came over to me and put her arms around me, she reassured and promised me that everything was going to be okay, and explained that the doctors had found it at its earlier stage, although her words made me a feel a little better, I was able to see the fright in her eyes and hear the wariness in her voice while she sat us down and answered every question we had. At this time I really didn’t have the knowledge about cancer like I do now. All I knew was that when I was 7 years old my Aunt had passed away from lung cancer, and now there were currently two people fighting breast cancer. My Aunt has been going through breast cancer treatment for the past couple of months and now my mom was about to do the same.

Weeks passed and the time had finally reached, it was my mom’s time to go into surgery and win this battle. The surgery, which doctors called a