I will persevere ...

By Malea Hamlin Texans Talk Staff Writer

I will persevere through my illness

The day I found out, I thought I would have a worse reaction than I did. I put my eyes down and all the talking turned into mumbling. I didn’t know what to do. I felt a pain in my throat and my head started to hurt automatically. I looked over at my teary-eyed mom, and she was looking at me saying something that I couldn’t understand. The doctor kept on mumbling about things that I just didn’t understand. I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to go home and go to bed and act like nothing happened--like I never heard what the doctor said. How did this happen? Why is everything happening to me? What do I do from here?

My name is Malea, and I was diagnosed with liver cancer November 15 this year. This wasn’t the first challenge I’ve faced in my medical history, but it is certainly the biggest. I was born with asthma. Then, when I was seven, I found out about my diabetes and how to take care of it. Diabetes is a disease where your body produces more insulin than other people. That means I have to keep my blood sugar levels stabilized: too high, and I get weak with a headache; too low, and I can go into a seizure. I didn’t understand all this at that age. All I knew was that I had to take this pill everyday and that I was different from the other kids.

A year later I went to see and optometrist because I couldn’t see the blackboard, even from the front row. He said my eyesight was getting worse every year and that there was a 65 percent chance that I might be legally blind by the time I was 42. That really didn’t sink in when I was only eight. Forty-two was a long way away, nothing I needed to be worried about.

Living with my eye problems, my diabetes and my asthma, I was already going through more than the average fifteen-year old should go through. I am always missing school to go to a doctor’s appointment of some sort. I have to take breathing treatments every night for my asthma and six pills the following morning. Before school each day, I put on my glasses and check that the homework that I had time to get done is in my book sack, make sure I have no appointments for that day and then and go to school.

While other students buy snacks as soon as they get to school, I have to eat a piece of fruit and water. Later, at lunch, there are no hamburgers or pizza or chicken sandwiches for me because they don’t fit into my diet of fruits and vegetables, with little meat because of my diabetes. After school I usually have to go to treatment or radiation for a couple hours for my cancer. I get home around ten o’clock and take out my books to start my homework, despite a pounding headache from the chemotherapy. I used to be in four AP classes, but I had to drop all but English because of the workload combined with my treatments.

My social life has changed dramatically. If I don’t feel good or have a slight headache, going out is out of the question. Chemotherapy and radiation usually leave me really weak, so I don’t want to go anywhere. I usually stay home and lie in bed, watching TV, which is a major change for me. I am extremely funny and usually hopping around somewhere,moving from one activity to the next, but this is something that I will just have to get used to. I have friends who come to see me at home and talk to me on the phone. They know what I’m going through, so it’s not like I am alone in this, but life for me has changed in a big way.

If I could say anything to teenagers who have cancer, I would tell them to be as strong as they can. You’re always going to have something against you, but you have to hold your head high and rise above it.

Malea Hamlin writes for Texans Talk at Sam Houston High School in Arlington.