Personal Narrative: Breast Cancer

Words: 544
Pages: 3

Nearly everyone knows someone who has been affected by cancer. However, it’s easy to distance yourself from the idea of sickness when the person isn’t very close to you, and for a long time, I was able to do this. But, when I was twelve years old, I learned that my mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and that she had been fighting it for months without a word. Through her actions and words, my mother taught me that courage and bravery could be everyday things.
I had known something was wrong for a while, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Sometimes, my mom would suddenly burst into tears and run upstairs, and my dad, visibly fighting back tears himself, would follow to comfort her. It terrified me to see both of my parents crying. Sometimes, I would hear my mother sobbing for hours. I still wasn't able to fully understand what was happening, but, I knew that my mom was sick, but not the kind of sick that could get better. I felt lonely and scared.
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“Breast cancer,” she'd said, whispering the word as if it were a sleeping animal we could not wake up. She told me what stage it was in, and how she would have to go through chemotherapy. Most of it went over my head, but I could see my mom wanted me to understand what was happening. When she was finished, I gave my mother a long hug, and we cried together.
When my mom started chemotherapy, I only knew one thing: that her long, beautiful hair was going to fall out. After only a few weeks of treatment, my mom noticed that she was losing lots of hair every time she used a comb. She sadly ran her fingers through her hair, and got out a small pair of scissors. The whole family watched silently as she brought the scissors up to her face and cut her hair as short as she