It started about three months after I twisted my knee.  I had used crutches and knee braces, and yet it wouldn?t get any better.  My doctor had told me simply that I had pulled my muscle and sprained my knee. He told me that I should take it easy for a few weeks.

   Right?  if it had been that simple, it wouldn?t have stayed so weak and sore for over two months.

My parents finally decided to make an appointment.  I met another doctor because my usual Kaiser doctor wasn?t there, or was busy for some reason.  She examined my knee, and got me to go in for X-rays.  When I went back into the normal room, she told me that I had cancer.  There was a possibility of it being a simple growth, but it was a slim chance.

I broke down and cried.  The word ?cancer? seemed to always be followed by death, and I like most, was not keen to the idea of dying.  Some might say that god was trying to pull those with terminal diseases to him, but I was an atheist, and so could not bring myself to believe in such things even if I tried.

   Religion didn?t comfort me; it scared me.  You never know how far a person is willing to go for their beliefs.  Through my perception of history, religion had been the cause of many strives and wars.  It seemed to blind people, and make them narrow-minded. I wasn?t raised to be religious, so I wasn?t.  Because of that religious discussions around me made me feel uncomfortable; I half expected for one of them to turn around and start yelling at me, calling me a heathen.

My dad attempted to comfort me by saying that chemotherapy and radiation would take care of it.  It wasn?t the fatal kind of cancer, and it would go away eventually.  The thought of chemotherapy made me feel worse, it was a familiar word that was always used on the news to tell of the struggles of cancer patients that died.  He bought me pizza from Papa Murphy?s in another attempt to make me feel better. I love him for trying, but I don?t think he quite understood.

When I came home, I went from being depressed to angry; what the hell had I done to deserve this, I thought to myself.  I spouted out the news quickly to my mom, being to frustrated to try and break it nicely.  She started balling, and when one of my friends near Organ called, she broke down in mid-conversation.  My friend, Tiffany, started crying over the line too: reduced to my mom?s state.  My dad, of course, hid most emotion and tried to be the strong protective one.  I sometimes wondered if he had the ability to cry.
 
 
 

I called my friends Kate and Alidia when I was feeling a little better, then I called my boyfriend Joey. Alidia went ballistic: ranting and raving.  Kate was ranting a bit, but on a smaller scale.  Joey wasn?t happy about the news either, but he assured me that I would get through it, and he would be there.  Always the sweetheart: I?m so lucky to have him?

A day later, I was carted to South San Francisco for some X-rays and things.  When I got there, I found myself getting ready for a biopsy.  When I was told that they were going to perform that small surgery, I freaked out.  I began balling, and if it hadn?t been for the people around me, I might have run away.

It was then that I?d realized how much my previous scoliosis surgery had scarred me.  I was now paranoid and frantic when anyone so much as spoke the word surgery.  The second surgery is always mentally worse than the first.  During the first surgery, you have the advantage of being ignorant.  The first surgery seems easier merely because of the fact that you don?t know or understand the aspects of surgery and recovery.  I came back from the first surgery with high spirits and optimism, thinking that nothing else could befall me; the worst was over.  That thought was mislead.

I woke up in pain like you usually do after surgery.  The nurses took about a half-hour to stabilize my medication.  I was given morphine to kill the pain.  I pushed a little button that let the medication go through my IV and into me.  To keep me from getting addicted, there had to be at least five minutes in between the times that I pushed the button.  It took quite a while for the throbbing to stop, and after it finally did I kept drifting in and out of sleep.

Most spectators think that the fear of surgery lies in the fact that ?you?re going under the knife?.  This is not so.  You don?t fear things that are going to happen while you?re out, you fear the struggles that you?ll have with pain medicine, and the sharp pain you?ll feel when you first wake up.  Why fear what you won?t be awake for?

When the doctor came in he told me his analysis.  I didn?t have cancer; I had a blood-filled bone cyst.  Basically, instead of a tumor eating at my bone, I had a blood-filled growth that had been eating my bone and was then occupying my femur.  Great?

This biopsy was only the beginning, however.  In a biopsy, all that the doctors do is take a sample of whatever is causing the problem, then analyze it.  My final surgery would come within three weeks.  He now had the information to take the thing out, granted I would?ve felt better if he?d just gone and taken the cyst out; you know, kill two birds with one stone.   I knew very well that the route he?d taken was much safer and more logical, but still, the thought of another surgery after that was not appealing.
 
 
 
 

I spent two weeks recovering at home after three days in the hospital.  It wasn?t as bad as my scoliosis surgery, where I spent a week in the hospital and had to wear yet another brace, but I was still trapped in the house and the only entertainment I had was a game boy, and the TV.

I had expected the next surgery to come the week after I got home, and to be truthful I almost hoped that it would be that next week, just so that it would all be over.  I talked to my friends every once in a while to pass the time, and sometimes Kate and Alidia would visit.  Rachel, a friend from my history class, would call me sometimes to talk about how life in general had been.

  I really wanted to go back to school, I know it sounds really dumb, but I missed everyone and I did have some cool classes.  I wished that I would be in that history class to learn about WW1, simply because I knew nothing about that war besides the fact that someone was assassinated. World War II was a war I didn?t care to go over however, because I?d heard too much about it from my grandpa.  The last thing we?d gone over before I was carted away was Yugoslavia.  Learning of the different countries that split away, the influence of the Russians, and of ancient hatreds had excited me more than my peers simply because most of my nationality lies in that region.  I?m 1/4th Croatian.  What I missed most of all was just the environment of the class.  I always felt that all my classmates in history were on equal level with me, and it made me feel like a part of a team.  My teacher, Mrs. Yost, tied everything together.  She made lessons fun, and got us to learn on deeper levels.  She actually had a model guillotine in her classroom.

When I was called back to San Francisco, fear set in again.  I spent the night at my grandparents in Castro Valley: staying awake for a long time.  My mind wouldn?t let me sleep; I didn?t want any of it to happen.  I couldn?t just go to bed as if it were a normal day because I knew that it wasn?t.  I wished that I didn?t know what surgery was like, just so that I could be comforted by ignorance.

This fear overcame me, and I began wandering around the house aimlessly with my head spinning.  I could bring no order to my mind.  Finally, I broke down and woke up my mom so we could talk for a while.  It just felt good to be around someone; by myself I only felt scared and insecure. She ended up sleeping next to me; I didn?t want her to leave me by myself.

I fought to stay in bed when the sun came up.  I?m usually somewhat of a morning person, but that day was a definite exception.  I did not want to go to that hospital. I kept telling my parents that I didn?t want to go, but of course I was dragged there; I had to have the surgery, otherwise it would get worse.

  So, reluctantly, I went, bringing music and fighting to keep myself together.  I was taken into a room to change into a gown, and get ready for them.  My heart was nearly leaping out of my chest with every breath I took as they drove the bed-on-wheel to the surgery.  The things that concerned me the most were the IV, painkillers, and anesthetics.  I didn?t like IVs, the needle was often put in the strangest place, and it had to stay in me for days.  My hand would often go numb with the IV in me because of the cold liquids that it fed me.

 The people that got me ready in the operating room were much nicer than the other doctors that I had been around; they seemed to actually care about my emotional health.  They played some music for me, and calmly told me what they were doing while they did it.  Soon I was out, and wouldn?t again wake for about three hours.  The Cyst would be cut out of my femur, and replaced by small rods and bone cement.

 Once again, pain was what I woke up to.  I begged hysterically for pain medicine, and found myself trying to bear with it all for twenty minutes.  I began to wonder why the people that often were around you when you woke didn?t have the medication up and ready.  There seemed to be no point in waiting until the person was awake and screaming out.

 They?d told me that I could become a great nurse because, having been through it all, I would have a great bedside manor.  In turn I told them that I?d seen enough hospitals and was not eager to work in one.

 When I was wheeled into a room, I was pushing my pain button constantly, being very impatient.  Throughout my stay there, I?d always rated my pain as 2 to the nurses.  It's on a scale from one to ten.  You really get fed up with them asking you to rate your pain after a while? I felt like shouting ?what the hell does it matter, I hurt!?  Still, they have to so that you?re not using too much of the medication.

 Within three hours, I called my friends, Kate and Alidia, then Joey on the hospital phone.  They were all happy that I was all right; I could tell that they had been worried.

The nurses here were a little gentler, and I came to like one of the guys on the night shift.  He just seemed nice.  My dad got a little agitated when he kept being kicked out of the room.  I had to use a bedpan when I went to the bathroom, so the nurses and my mom always made him leave.  I, personally, was beyond caring.  Dignity didn?t matter much to me in that state.

My boyfriend came to visit me the next day.  His stepfather had been going to San Francisco for something, so Joey could be left with me at the hospital for a while.  With him, I didn?t act nearly as needy.  When in the hospital, most have a tenancy to boss around the people that usually stay around them.  I wined, and asked for little favors like rubbing my feet, or scratching my nose.  At that point I was usually a complete invalid, but I wasn?t going to act that annoying around Joey; he had, after all, come from Sacramento.  He sat in a car for three hours just to visit for a while, and that thought made me happier as I laid on the bed.