Sharing Hope
Its 7:10 a.m. and I’m running late. As I try to make it out the door in time to get to school I grab the two things I never leave home without: my CTR ring and my gray wristband. While the may seem trivial to most they are what remind me who I am. The ring tells me to Choose The Right, simple enough. However, when I look at that gray wristband with the words ‘SHARING HOPE’ imprinted in it I find myself remembering the summer before 7th grade and how much it changed my life as well as all of my families.
It’s 11 July 2005. My room is a mess as I’ve just torn it apart searching for my swimsuit. My two best friends are sitting on my bed fidgeting impatiently. “Just borrow your sisters swimsuit”, Catey says,” I want to get to the pool already!” Not wanting to waste more valuable summer time out of the water I swiftly grab Alison’s suit and we walk down the hall as quickly as possible. As we go out the front door my dad and Alison are pulling up in the ’77 copper Chevy.
“I wonder what’s going on”, I think to myself as I see a very lost expression on my dad’s face and tears flowing from Alison’s eyes. “Oh well”, I think, “I’ll find out later I guess”, and I push the image of their faces from my mind as I chase Catey and Alyssa across the street.
That afternoon, after I had taken a shower to get the chlorine out of my hair, my dad came in the room and asked if he could talk to all of us. I knew that earlier in the morning Alison had gone to get an MRI of her head to see if they could figure out why she had been having such bad headaches. I also remembered my mom mentioning that not even an hour after the test our doctor had called and asked if he could see Alison and one of her parents in his office as soon as possible. It wasn’t until just now that I started to put the little pieces together in my head. “What does this mean?” I wonder to myself as my dad sits us down to tell us what was happening. “How much longer will I have my sister?” As I’m sitting down I look on my dad’s face. Every wrinkle and crease seemed more apparent with the dark shadows under his grief-stricken eyes, glazed over in what I feared was fear for the life of his daughter. I can no longer remember exactly what he said to all us girls as we sat around our kitchen table, my brother missing from among us since he had left the day before to go camping with some of his friends for the week. All I really remember is him saying the words brain tumor, coma, and surgery in some sort of order. As this went on Alison sat in the chair at the computer Googleing a Dr. Kim Manwaring while she not so softly repeated “I’m going to Girls Camp” over and over and over again.
Alison and my parents were made and appointment to see this Dr. Manwaring in Phoenix on 13 July, the Wednesday of that week. Up until the morning the left there wasn’t much for talking in my house but there was a dramatic increase in the number hugs giving at random and you could almost count on someone have a tear slowly finding its way down someone’s face. For those two nights before they left I would lay awake on my bed listening to Alison and Bethany talk across the room. Both nights I could hear the tears begin to fall as Bethany quietly asked Alison if she was scared and both nights I could her Alison even quieter reply. “To death”.
Wednesday morning Alison, my mom, and my dad all got in the suburban and left to go see the Neurosurgeon in Phoenix. That evening we got a call, Dr. Manwaring isn’t going to let Alison come home. Instead he as pushed other appointment aside and scheduled Alison to have surgery on Friday morning. Then we got another call Thursday morning and Dr. Manwaring had pushed up her surgery to that afternoon. He didn’t want to push his already limited time. After that my two remaining sisters and I sat around the house waiting for the phone to ring. We didn’t talk to each other, we didn’t even look at each other but every once in a while I would be sitting on the couch flipping through channels and Bethany would come sit beside me and put her arm around me and we would both have to wipe that trail of tears from our eyes the never seemed to completely disappear. On Thursday night the three of us waited by the phone praying that when it rang it would be one of our parents telling us Alison would be ok. But that call didn’t come that night and as it got later and later Bethany and I sat on couch, our fingers linked together, slowly drifting to sleep.
All the lights in my house were out as I lay there on the couch on Friday morning. Slowly streams of sunlight began to pour on my face through the window as the sun rose. Soon I could see Bethany begin to stir as she woke up from a restless night of sleep. Just as she is lifting her head to look at the clock on the DVD player the phone rings. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move as fast as Bethany did at that moment. “Hello?” she asks into the phone, breathless with anticipation. Then her face breaks into a huge grin as she listens to Alison tell her to pack some clothes for her for Girls Camp and repeat numerous times how much she LOVES morphine. At that point my dad took the phone from her and told Bethany that we could come up and see her today.
The mood in my house was a million times lighter was we all got ready that morning. I don’t think my house had ever appeared so bright and filled with joy as it did on that morning. The drive up to Phoenix was the shortest one I had ever been on but at the same time it dragged on forever as Bethany bounced up and down in the front passenger seat telling Shelby to drive faster. Before I knew it we were pulling into the parking garage by the Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Everything seemed surprisingly bright as we walked through the white, sterile hallways of the hospital. On right there was a glass wall with a koy pond on the other side of it, sunlight bouncing off the water from the glass ceiling in place above it. When we finally go to the big doors leading to the neuro portion of the ICU we pushed the big black button that signaled the nurses inside that someone was outside wanting to get in. “Oh there you are! She’s been asking for you all day!” the short blonde nurse said as she opened the doors and stepped aside to let us in. At the end of the short hall stretched out in front of us we could see Alison flipping through channels seeming bored with her selections of movies to watch. When she saw us she threw the remote in my dad’s general direction and turned her entire torso towards our approaching figures. It was odd watching her try to look around. Since she couldn’t turn her neck she had to turn her entire body just to look in another direction.
As we left the hospital that day I felt different. Something in my life and how I looked at life had changed. I no longer view time as something that I want to pass but rather something to be held onto because we never know when our time or someone we loves time is going to run out. I also realized for the first time how important family is. I learned that my family is there for each other no matter what is going on in our lives, and as I look at my gray wristband that Alison got for all of us to support brain tumor research I remember what I learned about myself and my family that summer before 7th grade.
It's Celebration of Life Day, my own false reality that I created to celebrate the day I lived, and tonight I celebrate the life of the boy who lived. So excited!
All the lights in my house were out as I lay there on the couch on Friday morning. Slowly streams of sunlight began to pour on my face through the window as the sun rose. Soon I could see Bethany begin to stir as she woke up from a restless night of sleep. Just as she is lifting her head to look at the clock on the DVD player the phone rings. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move as fast as Bethany did at that moment. “Hello?” she asks into the phone, breathless with anticipation. Then her face breaks into a huge grin as she listens to Alison tell her to pack some clothes for her for Girls Camp and repeat numerous times how much she LOVES morphine. At that point my dad took the phone from her and told Bethany that we could come up and see her today.
The mood in my house was a million times lighter was we all got ready that morning. I don’t think my house had ever appeared so bright and filled with joy as it did on that morning. The drive up to Phoenix was the shortest one I had ever been on but at the same time it dragged on forever as Bethany bounced up and down in the front passenger seat telling Shelby to drive faster. Before I knew it we were pulling into the parking garage by the Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Everything seemed surprisingly bright as we walked through the white, sterile hallways of the hospital. On right there was a glass wall with a koy pond on the other side of it, sunlight bouncing off the water from the glass ceiling in place above it. When we finally go to the big doors leading to the neuro portion of the ICU we pushed the big black button that signaled the nurses inside that someone was outside wanting to get in. “Oh there you are! She’s been asking for you all day!” the short blonde nurse said as she opened the doors and stepped aside to let us in. At the end of the short hall stretched out in front of us we could see Alison flipping through channels seeming bored with her selections of movies to watch. When she saw us she threw the remote in my dad’s general direction and turned her entire torso towards our approaching figures. It was odd watching her try to look around. Since she couldn’t turn her neck she had to turn her entire body just to look in another direction.
As we left the hospital that day I felt different. Something in my life and how I looked at life had changed. I no longer view time as something that I want to pass but rather something to be held onto because we never know when our time or someone we loves time is going to run out. I also realized for the first time how important family is. I learned that my family is there for each other no matter what is going on in our lives, and as I look at my gray wristband that Alison got for all of us to support brain tumor research I remember what I learned about myself and my family that summer before 7th grade.
It's Celebration of Life Day, my own false reality that I created to celebrate the day I lived, and tonight I celebrate the life of the boy who lived. So excited!
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