\u201cYou have cancer.\u201d
\nThree words that I never thought I would hear. Hearing those three words made me feel silly that 3 years
\nago I was afraid of the three words \u201cI love you\u201d. Yet, three years ago, I was a junior in college still
\nundecided and trying to figure out how I was going to pay for dinner. Fast forward three years later and
\nnow I have to figure whether or not I want to fight this. Whether I want to fight my broken body or give
\nin.
\n\u201cMrs. Green\u2026\u201d
\nMy eyes adjust from the painting above Dr. Burke to him.
\n\u201cMrs. Green, are you okay?\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m super doctor?\u201d
\nDr. Burke looks at me with concern, but doesn\u2019t know what to say. You can tell he doesn\u2019t do this often.
\nHe hands me a pamphlet of a cancer center nearby that he says I should look into, and a paper. A paper
\nthat says, \u201cHow to tell your loved ones you have the Big C\u201d, \u201cBig C\u201d as if you are a struggling rapper.
\nThat is when I realize that I have to tell Damon.
\nI met Damon six years ago at a concert my senior year of high school, he was the guitarist in the
\nunderground band called \u201cNeighbors\u201d that one of my friends loved. He was interesting, and by
\ninteresting, I mean he was weird. He had his hair drenched in sweat, a holey shirt and caci shorts. He can
\nargue that was in style, but thankfully it wasn\u2019t. Somehow, he caught my eye and we ended up getting
\nmarried. We have been married for 6 days, 3 hours, and 35 minutes, and now I am dying. Talk about till
\ndeath do us part. I came in wanting to know if I had strep throat and came out knowing that I have
\nhypopharynx cancer.
\nHypopharynx is the lower part of your throat and is the pathway for food and oxygen. Cancerous cells
\nstarted to develop in that area who knows when and now I am at stage three, well that is the hope.
\nThroat cancer is very common to diagnose late so Dr. Burke was not shocked that I did not notice
\nanything until now. They need to take more test to be certain I am at stage three because there are more
\nstages of this type of cancer than the common stages 0-4. Beyond stage IV there is stages; IVA, IVB,
\nand lastly IVC, IVC is when the cancer has spread all over. I hope for Damon that this cancer is not the
\ncase.
\n\u2026
\nIt has been two weeks since I found out that I have cancer and I still have not told Damon, yet I have no
\nidea what stage I am at. I guess there is no way to tell him until I know for sure what stage I am at,
\nright? I just wanted to enjoy being newlyweds on our honeymoon, except I couldn\u2019t, because I felt like I
\ncouldn\u2019t breathe on the plane, and once we got to Barbados, more symptoms start to come up that Dr.
\nBurke warned me about. For instance, it always feel like I have something in my throat, it sometimes
\nfeels like I can\u2019t breathe, and I\u2019m tired all the time, but the one thing I am so tired about is trying to
\ncome up with excuse not to tell him. I have to tell him.
\n\u201cHay babe, what are thinking about?\u201d Damon says as we pull into the driveway of a house that we are
\nlooking into buying together.
\n\u201cNothing, I was just noticing how the fence doesn\u2019t give us any privacy form the neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYah, I was noticing that too, but it is close to a good school district.\u201d
\nI have to tell him.
\n\u201cUm\u2026 I was thinking after this, we could stop and get some Chinese and go home and stay in tonight.
\nWhat do you think?\u201d I ask anxiously.
\n\u201cYah that sounds nice, are you sure you are up for Chinese, you haven\u2019t been able to keep anything
\ndown.\u201d He says with a concerned voice.
\n\u201cYes I am absolutely sure. I have been craving it.\u201d
\n\u201cOkay, my love.\u201d He says as he grabs my hand squeezes it.
\nOur relator pulls up behind us and he gets off our car to greet her. The moment the driver door slams
\nshut a sense of disgusts comes over me because I probably will never get the chance to have the
\nbeautiful life that I always wanted. I pull the visor down, fix my makeup and pull myself together.
\n\u2026
\nWe finally made it up the five flights of stairs to my crammed apartment with cartons of Chinese food.
\nThe moment I walked through that door, I knew that everything was going to change. Damon places the
\nfood on the counter top in the kitchen and makes his way to the living room. He turns on the television
\nand asks what we should watch.
\n\u201cUm, I was hoping\u2026 I-I was wondering if we could talk.\u201d I swallow hard, which only reminds me about
\nthe lump in my through, literally.
\nHe turns his head to look at me, then turns off the T.V and says, \u201cI know.\u201d
\nThose words made my stomach sink all the way to Ms.Heckels apartment on the 2nd floor.
\nI hesitantly say, \u201cYou kno-ow what?\u201d
\n\u201cOh, Emmy I know that you are pregnant.\u201d He says as he gets up and walks towards me with open arms
\nand a huge smile.
\n\u201cI\u2019m what?\u201d as I push his arms down to his waist.
\n\u201cEmma, you\u2019re pregnant. Your cravings, you can\u2019t eat anything without throwing up-\u201d
\n\u201cI-I am not pregnant.\u201d Interrupting him mid-sentence.
\n\u201cWhat?\u201d He says as he looks at me with an uneasy tone.
\n\u201cI\u2019m not pregnant, I\u2019m sick.\u201d I can hear my voice almost break in the back of my throat.
\n\u201cOh.\u201d He says with a little disappointment, \u201cDo you want me to run to the pharmacy and pick up some
\nmedicine for you, maybe a pregnancy test?\u201d he says with a smirk.
\n\u201cI\u2019M NOT PREGNANT! I probably will never be pregnant!\u201d This time my voice breaks completely and
\ntears, start rushing out of my eyes as if they were facets.
\nHis grin fades and he rushes over and wraps his arms around me.<\/p>\n
I say while my face still buried into his chest, \u201cI have cancer.\u201d
\nIn that moment I swear I could feel his heart stop. For 2 minutes he just held me, he doesn\u2019t know what
\nto say. I begin to panic so I step back to look at his reaction. His eyes where full of tears and he was pale
\nas a ghost.
\nI broke my husband.
\nHearing those three words from my wife had brought me back to when I was 12 years old and being told
\nthat my twin sister had cancer. I had heard a few things about cancer from kids in my class, but I
\nassumed it was something older people got, not my sister who was only 3 minutes and 36 seconds
\nyounger than I was.
\nI asked him to sit down, and he slowly in a haze makes his way back to the couch, I sit on the coffee
\ntable across from him. Once he sat down he begins to ask in a unsettling way, \u201cHow-When did you find
\nout?\u201d still with a blank expression.
\n\u201cI found out when I went to the doctors to ask about my throat.\u201d
\nHe is brought back to reality when he calculates those days you can see his facial expression mimic his
\nanger as he shoots straight up from the couch saying, \u201cWait… You have known for two weeks! You
\nknew when we were on our honeymoon?!\u201d He says with a frustrated tone, which only makes the tears in
\nhis eyes build.
\nI fall silent as I try to find an excuse on why I didn\u2019t tell him sooner. He begins to get frustrated with my
\nsilence and says, \u201cI\u2019m sorry that this is my reaction, but I don\u2019t know what you expected since it took
\nyou two weeks to tell me, your husband, that you have cancer. We would have stayed and gotten you
\ntreatment. Instead you let me talk about the future when we should have been talking about the present. I
\ncannot believe that you handled this situation this way, especially since you know what I went through
\nwith my sister Dalizia.\u201d
\nThe moment her name comes out of my mouth I, begin to see her sitting in her hospital bed with a smile
\nfrom ear to ear as I walk through the door of her hospital room. I loved her so much that seeing her like
\nthat made me resent life for giving her instead of me Leukemia. I am not ready to lose another important
\nwoman in my life.
\nI need to say something, anything.
\nThis whole time I tried to come up with the right words to say, but I had to tell him the real reason why
\nI had not. I reach for his hand as I am still sitting on the coffee table and he is standing and I begin
\nsaying, \u201cThat\u2019s the reason why I didn\u2019t want to tell you so soon is because I wanted to enjoy our
\nhoneymoon, I wanted to enjoy being your wife instead of a burden. I wanted to be with you, the cancer
\nwas not going anywhere, and I did not want you to think the worst, specifically about Dalizia.\u201d As soon
\nas those words left my mouth, I felt relieved, even though it was selfish of me. I think Damon saw the
\nrelief in my face as well.
\n\u201cThrough sickness and in health Emma, I don\u2019t care about the honeymoon I care about you. The fact
\nthat you knew you were sick and still decided to go to another country blows my mind. What if
\nsomething happened, just the idea of something happening to you to where I wouldn\u2019t know what to do
\nmakes me feel like you do not trust my judgement as much as you should?\u201d He sits in silence and
\ngathers himself.
\n\u201cIt was not my intention to not tell, but I was scared, it is not fair!\u201d<\/p>\n
I try to stop myself from wondering, but I can\u2019t,I go back to that night. I at only 13 years old sprinting
\ndown the dark hallway of the hospital as I hear Dalizia\u2019s room number being paged through the
\nintercom, \u201cROOM 316 CODE BLUE! I repeat ROOM 316 CODE BLUE!\u201d I get up to the door of her
\nroom when everything goes silent and I can see all the nurses and doctors rushing, but in slow motion. It
\nwasn\u2019t until the line that tracked her heart rate became flat. For a long time after, I believed that when
\nDalizia\u2019s heart stopped mine did. I became depressed and thought I would never recover, that is until I
\nmet Emma.
\nI know what he is thinking about, he has gone through so much and I can\u2019t believe he has to go through
\nthis again all alone. I know I\u2019m the one with cancer but throughout his life someone had to leave. First it
\nwas father on his and Dalizia\u2019s 5th birthday, then his best friend\/ sister at 13, and lastly, his mother at
\nthe age of 14 because she couldn\u2019t handle grief. After the train of abandonment and loss he passed
\nthrough foster home to foster home, till he aged out of the system. Now I have cancer, with the
\nuncertainty of getting better. He wanted 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girl so no one feels alone or left out. He
\nwants to be the dad he never had and teach his kids the things fathers are supposed to. He wants the life
\nthat he had dreamed of late night as he cried himself to sleep in a different house every other week. I
\npromised all of those things and now we are living in uncertainty.
\nThe gut-wrenching feeling of letting the love of my life down is worse than the pain of my body failing.
\nI begin to cry with that idea in mind. I say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d
\nHe grabs my hand and squeezes it saying, \u201cYou could never be a burden my love, you are my world.\u201d
\nAs I look into his eyes I can see his mind wonder about what our next step is. I take his hand and bring
\nhim back to me and that is when he realizes this is all real. The buildup of the tears in his eyes begin to
\nflow down his cheek like a creek falling through ever dip and edge on his face. He locks his arms around
\nme and pulls me on the couch; we sit for two and half hours in silence, just holding each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cYou have cancer.\u201d Three words that I never thought I would hear. Hearing those three words made me feel silly that 3 years ago I was afraid of the three words \u201cI love you\u201d. Yet, three years ago, I was a junior in college still undecided and trying to figure out how I was going… <\/p>\n