Once I had the perfect life. I had long school days homework midterms and chores. I had school friends best friends camp friends and acquaintances. I was 16 and I had the busy pressured exhausting life of an average teenager and it was perfect. But if you had told me how wonderful my life was I would never have believed you. I pouted and complained and argued and I kvetched. In fact I kvetched quite a lot. Until one day my perfect average everyday life was over. It started with a bump. One morning during davening at school I thought I felt a lump in my neck. It was the strangest thing. I poked and prodded it and even asked my friend to take a look just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t the bump was really there. It took two exhausting weeks of tests scans and meeting many new doctors to discover what was wrong. At first I was thrilled to be missing so much school but after a few days the novelty wore off. I missed my friends. I missed socializing and I even missed some of my classes. I couldn’t wait to get back to my once-perfect life. The doctors figured it out soon enough but their prognosis only made things worse. At 16 I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It turned my world upside down. Hodgkin’s and lymphoma are strange unrecognizable words but they were demystified the second the doctor explained “You have cancer.”

To read the rest of this story please buy this issue of Mishpacha or sign up for a weekly subscription