My name is Alice Fowler and I’m here to tell my story about having cancer. I have a husband named Danny, two kids named Hailey and Victoria, and a dog named Oliver. The day that I was diagnosed was going really well before I started to get curious.
It was a Friday that day which meant I got to spend the day with my husband. You might be wondering why both of us aren’t at work on a Friday, but that’s because I’m a stay at home mom and my husband gets every other Friday off of work for a break. I woke up at around 10:30 in the morning which is quite refreshing for me, because typically, I wake up at 6:30 to get my kids to school on time. Since my husband wanted to let me sleep longer than usual, he brought the kids to school. Since Danny was already up, he prepared a nice breakfast for me to wake up to. Once I woke up, I walked into the kitchen, and found a meal of scrambled eggs, crunchy bacon that had just come out of the pan, toast with sweet, strawberry jelly smeared on top, and a coffee pot filled almost to the top. I enjoyed this wonderfully delicious meal on the couch with Danny while we watched our favorite show. After Danny and I were done eating, we decided to take our dog, Oliver, to the park. At the park, we met up with our close friends that we met because they’re our children’s parents. We talked to them for about an hour while our dogs ran around and then went home to relax for a bit.
When we got home, Danny went to the living room to watch a show and I went to my room to do the taxes. After I finished up with the taxes, I looked into something that I had been wondering about for a couple weeks now. The topic that I looked up were the symptoms of cancer. I looked this up because since my mom had gotten breast cancer before, I wanted to see if I had any symptoms of it, just in case it happened to be genetic. It turns out that I had not just a few of the symptoms, but nearly all of them. This scared me relatively badly so I scheduled an appointment to get a mammogram. The appointment was scheduled for 5:30 tonight. I told my husband what I had found out and he called his mom to ask her to pick up the kids since he would obviously be coming with me to my mammogram appointment. When 4:30 came, we headed to the hospital and met up with the doctor who would be assisting me. We got the mammogram done and patiently waited for the results.
Two hours passed and no results yet. Once three hours had passed by, the doctor came in and delivered the awful news that would ruin my life forever. He said that I, Alice Fowler, had stage four cancer. My heart dropped all the way to my feet and I burst into tears immediately. My husband wrapped me in an embrace that I wanted to last for forever. I wanted to be in his gentle and comforting embrace for the rest of my life and never have to deal with the awful reality that was brought to me only a few seconds ago. Sadly, it ended after around ten minutes because the doctor had to give me more information about what I have to do to maintain my health as much as possible.
The doctor told me that I was to start chemotherapy tomorrow since my case was so urgent. He also said that I had to be hospitalized due to the condition I’ll be in after starting chemotherapy. I went home after the doctor was done explaining everything and Danny and I talked about the future and what we’re going to do now because of the cancer. We decided that first of all, we have to make an announcement on social media platforms so we can get some help from friends and family. Almost immediately, we had so many responses from loved ones telling us that they’ll do anything at all to help us out, and that we’re in their prayers. Danny and I were extremely comforted by the fact that everyone came to our rescue and so we sent a big thank you message to everybody.
When the kids got home from school, we explained what was going on and they made the sweetest little cards for me. They quickly did their homework, and by then it was time for bed. So Danny and I tucked them, and decided to go to bed as well since it had been such a long day. The next day, we got out of bed and headed to the hospital to start my chemotherapy. It was a long and painful process, but thankfully I had all of my close friends and family there to comfort me. I know this all sounds like I would be happy since I have everybody by my side, but in reality, I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t happy at all. What’s even worse, is that when I explained this to people, they just said it was normal because I have cancer. But I knew that wasn’t it. This isn’t just sadness because I was diagnosed with cancer. This was something worse than sadness. Then it hit me and I realized that I was depressed.
I tried to get a therapist, but it just wasn’t working out. The therapist just wasn’t telling me what I knew I needed to hear. So I stopped seeing the therapist and instead, talked to close friends and my husband. They helped me out, but only a little bit. Not enough to keep me from being depressed. After one long day, when my doctor told me that I only had three years left to live, I started to have suicidal thoughts. This was new to me since I had lead an amazing life so far. But they all started coming in at once.
My mind raced back and forth thinking these toxic thoughts. The thoughts consumed and confused me. They disguised themselves as my friends and convinced me that everything they said was to help me out. They told me that ending it all was the best thing to do for myself. For a couple weeks I believed them too. But eventually, I had had enough of the pain and suffering from both my depression and my cancer. I just wanted to end everything. I wanted to end it forever and never have to deal the pain ever again. So I grabbed a couple pill bottles from around the room and went into the bathroom. As I was opening them all, I heard the bathroom door creak open. It was husband, who heard me grab numerous amounts of pill bottles and head to the bathroom. I forgot he was here. Although I didn’t realize that he was there, I was extremely relieved that he was actually with me. Being the loving person he is, he talked to me and convinced me not to take my own life for I had so many people who would miss me and become depressed themselves if I had been beaten by my depression. He gave me the courage to not take my life and to live on. I was also so inspired by Danny, that for the next three years, I would help people out that are like me. I would donate my money to a cancer research foundation and work as an assistant therapist to help depressed people out with their depressing and suicidal thoughts. Because of my husband, Danny, I was given courage to not take my precious life. Because of my cancer, and everybody helping me pull through this hard time, I was given inspiration to help others with similar issues as mine. Because of my extremely challenging life experiences, I decided to help people pull through.