23-year-old cancer survivor, graduate student, traveler, and lover of the outdoors
I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 10. At the time, I didn’t understand what terms like malignant, cancer, or chemotherapy meant. All I knew, from watching my parents’ reaction to my diagnosis, was that it wasn’t good. In all honesty, I was lucky to go through my treatment while I was a kid. When you’re young, you spend your time wondering what you might grow up to become. Never do you entertain the notion that you might not grow up at all.
Thankfully, after a year of treatment, I was able to walk out of the hospital, cancer free. Despite this, I still did not have an adequate understanding of how cancer had changed my life. In 2015, I got involved with Above + Beyond Cancer on their mission trip to Nepal. While at a children’s hospital in Kathmandu, I saw the same look of despair on the parents’ faces that I saw on mine when I was diagnosed. Yet, when I was introduced to them, their eyes sparkled. Standing before them was a childhood cancer survivor, healthy and alive. For them, I represented hope, a hope that their children could still fantasize about what they will grow up to become and that it could be a reality. In that moment, I realized my cancer journey was not about my personal battle with cancer, but about how I could use my own experience to better the lives of others.
Above + Beyond Cancer has taught me that because each day is not guaranteed, we must strive to live every single one to the fullest. The real value of life is that it is finite, moments are fleeting, and the future is uncertain. Therefore, we must seize every opportunity as they present themselves, climb that mountain, and extend a helping hand. For when it comes time for us to leave this Earth, we should make sure it matters that we were there in the first place.