10 Years Later: Look How Far She Has Come

By Kazi Walker

            A life-size green and orange U sits at the heart of campus at the University of Miami, as the school colors are scattered
along Ponce De Leone Boulevard in Coral Gables. Eight different languages can be heard when walking through campus and there are 10,000 diverse undergrads sweating as they walk from class to class in the heat. Within walking distance of campus there is Frat Row, who host tailgates before every home football game. Natural light beers, mechanical bulls, and hundreds of students jumping up and down to music in small spaces while cops just observe from a far. Then a bike ride away sits an apartment complex called Red Road, where Marissa, a sophomore at the University, lives. It is a new life; 1,400 miles away from hospital visits, constant IV drips, and a place she used to call home.

            Marissa sits frequently at the pool in her apartment complex. Today, I accompanied her. I was visiting her for the weekend as it was her 10-year anniversary of being cancer free. A huge milestone worth celebrating. We both looked around the pool area and began to laugh.

            “Wow, look how far I’ve come.”

            She was right.

It was February 2^nd, 2009. Marissa was nine years old. My parents were pulled into a supply closet by a doctor at Yale New Haven Hospital.

            “Suspicions were confirmed from the biopsy today; your daughter has a tumor.”

Marissa during chemotherapy treatments

An active nine-year-old, athletic, witty, little girl, now diagnosed with Osteosarcoma. A bone cancer that was found on her left femur. A total of 28 weeks of chemo, which included a major surgery to remove, not only the tumor, but her entire femur as well, was the journey Marissa had no other choice but to follow. Her femur was replaced with an expandable prosthesis. Leaving a 14-inch scar that ran up the inside of her leg, and an eight-inch scar that went down the outside of her leg, which both would be re-opened a countless more times in the future.  

Memories had flooded the sophomore from Miami when I asked what were some of the most vivid memory’s she experienced.

Marissa smirked, and I was waiting for a sarcastic comment in response, but she tried to figure out where she should begin.

            Every week seemed like a week from hell that’s summer. There were weeks of being in and out of the hospital, constantly feeling like crap from February to November, but there was one specific week that was especially brutal. Cisplatin week. A chemotherapy that would wipe out every cell in the human body. Marissa’s port, where she would receive chemo from, sat just underneath her left breast. Every other week, Marissa stopped at her doctor’s office in Guilford to get her port access before she made the 15- minute trek up to Yale. Except one specific day. They went straight to Yale instead. Her favorite nurse, Laura, had tried to access her port by sticking a needle into the hole in her chest. Except, they couldn’t find the right location. Crying, Marissa would not sit still as the discomfort had become overwhelming. It took four different attempts to stick the needle in the port. This had never happened before. Marissa knew it was going to be a long six days. She was right.

            On top of the port being in her chest, she also had an IV put in her right arm, which she hated. Nurses had loaded her up with fluids before they turned off all the lights. They then carried a brown bag into the room. The light couldn’t touch the chemo. A neon yellow substance emerged from the bag, it was glowing. It was the only light in the room and it was going into Marissa’s 64-pound body. A cruel and evil substance, killing almost every cell inside her. It left Marissa the sickest she had ever been. She was constantly nauseous and would throw up on a regular basis. Her body had become weak. She didn’t eat anything those six days in the hospital. She felt defeated.

            Extreme sickness and extreme pain consumed Marissa, what seemed to be all the time. And even though the cisplatin felt unbearable, Marissa didn’t know that the worst was yet to come.

Marissa took a sip out of her water bottle and sticks her face up in the sun.

“Oh, now let me tell you about my first surgery, post-op. That’s a good one.”

            “Beep, Beep, Beep.”

X-Ray of Marissa's leg and hip

            Noises surrounded the drugged Marissa. Where was she? What was going on? She could hear everything around her, but she couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t move. Her body still frozen as she had to sit and listen to the nurses talking around her. An oxygen mask sat on her face. Stickers pressed against her chest and arms along with IV’s and tubes hooked up in every which direction. She was hooked up to four different machines and had two drains coming out of her left leg. Yet, all she could think about was how she was cold and couldn’t do anything about it. She could feel the nurses were rolling her in bed from one side of the room to another to try to get blood flow and would ask her if she was in pain as if she could respond back. Her throat hurt from the breathing tube. And she still couldn’t open her eyes. There was a heavy pain in her left leg. It was wrapped up in gauze, seven different ace bandages, and a brace that covered her entire leg. There were tubes coming out of every direction. Stockings had covered her right leg for blood flow and her feet had special socks on. There was a nerve block in her hip and an epidural in her back. She was falling in and out of sleep. As she constantly could hear the different machines beep.

 “Marissa, I’m right here, I’m with you.”

 Instantly her eyes opened. Marissa would only open her eyes for her mom. She knew the voice instantly. Her eyes were opened, she could hear everything around her, but words were very limited. She mostly moaned.

 “It hurts, it hurts.”

            A nurse asked on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most pain you can have, what was Marissa’s pain. She cried, hysterically, trying to grab her leg. She asked my mom, in tears, to make the pain stop. She would never admit it was a ten. But, it was. Her answer never went above a nine. 

            My mom had just embraced the doctor who told her the cancer was all gone prior to when she went into see Marissa. She was beside herself with happiness until she saw Maris. She had to step out of the room, she almost passed out because of how brutal and traumatizing Marissa looked laying in the hospital bed.

Marissa celebrating 10 years cancer free

            Marissa and I both looked at each other and smiled. We laid next to each other on our towels, baking in the sun. I had experienced her battle from an outsider perspective at a young age. I would never fully understand what she had to go through. But, I always admired her because I knew I would have never been able to handle the pain the way she did. She enjoyed that, I think. She enjoyed knowing she was the tough one. She was always goofing around and making witty comments to anyone who walked into her room at the hospital. Marissa was very special, especially to me, her older sister. Marissa grabbed my hand from my towel and squeezed it.

            “And here is to 10 more years.”