Lost Childhood

I remember the metallic burnt odor, like when Dad forgets to check the grill. Unlike the food on the grill, however, it was my own flesh being burned to cinders. Pain overwhelms my abandoned corpse-like body. I’m numb, a host to the parasite of pain that is feeding on my every relief. I feel as though I am alive in a coffin. My insides were toxic to what is supposed to cure me. My eyes shoot open, scared and alert. There are hands inside my open and exposed body. The people in the white coats bark orders to each other, their ghostly faces petrified like wood. I wish I could scream, move, panic, but I cannot evade this. I’m stuck, awake, during surgery, where I’m supposed to be asleep. Chills begin to overwhelm my fragile body; every single hair saluting the next. I want out, away from this sleepless slumber. A salty trail of tears escape my emerald eyes, as the fighting to stay alive voids the longing for peace, and I slip into the darkness.

I was that kid in the corner of the classroom that no one noticed was there until I wasn’t. I missed the spelling bees and scavenger hunts; boys never gave me cooties. I was the last kid chosen for kickball because I was not allowed to play. No one knew my name, just my diagnosis. School days were replaced with CT scans, MRIs, Chemotherapy, and naps. My best friends changed as frequently as the nurses switched shifts. Everyone treated me like glass just waiting to be shattered. I was absent more than I was present in a classroom. My tests included white blood cell counts and bone marrow cross - matches of which I failed more times than I passed. I wondered if I would have been the kid that is always first to answer a question or the one that does ballet and gymnastics, or the one that could make everyone laugh. Instead, I’m simply the ghost child, lost in the classroom that is still unknown to me.

The hospital room is forever stained in my mind: the bed with the mint green sheets that were never warm enough; the TV that only worked on eight channels; the plain wall unmarked by even a single picture; the scuffed up white floor made of sixty-four square tiles. There was a single nail, forgotten in the wall next to the TV, which I’m sure no one ever noticed, but I did. The curtains that hung from the window were home to a cricket that both kept me company, and drove me insane. I came to know the walls of the hospital better than I knew my own brothers. Even with a medical staff of over a hundred in and out of my room pastel room, it seemed empty.

I missed the divorce, my brother’s graduation, his first heartbreak, and the adoption of Sally, the Golden Retriever. As I sat alone in the bed with the mint green sheets, I saw the glares of hatred between mom and dad, which they believed to be unseen. I saw the light wrinkles begin to form under mom’s eyes. Mom would conveniently avoid my room, to escape the sight of my deteriorating body. I would watch her flirt with the scruffy man in the hallway through the glass wall. I watched her kiss him on the cheek, take his hand, and walk away. I didn’t miss crying for a mother’s love. I didn’t miss dad snoring in the overly small bed beside me night after night. I watched him pray, research treatments, and beg the doctors for answers. I didn’t miss my brothers sneaking S’mores and ice cream past the nursing staff. I didn’t miss dad singing, “You are my Sunshine” and “Happy Birthday.” I watched as my brother prepared for his first date and watched him cry when she shattered his world. I smiled when my little brother let Sally, the Golden Retriever wander the hospital in search of my new location in the Intensive Care Unit. I went on adventures with Huckleberry Fin, fought a whale with Moby Dick, got stranded on an island with Ralph, and Piggy, and fell in love with Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. I saw the pain that my illness bestowed on my family. I saw it cripple them. I laid weak in a sickly body that I could not control, watching my once happy family fall into brittle pieces of misery, and I cried.

On good days I would pretend to be “normal” and take a walk outside, allowing the fresh crisp air to fill my lungs. I would go to the movies and the mall, always under the cover of a baseball cap to avoid the unpleasant stares. The good days unfortunately were few and far in between. More frequently than not I’d hit what Dad called a “rough patch.” Days where the iron taste of blood flowed from my mouth, coughing fits, and 102-degree fevers kept me in bed. Days where even the slightest pressure on my porcelain skin turn the once flawless flesh into shades of yellow and purple. Days where the doctors weren’t doctors anymore, but a part of my family, who watched me grow and fade away sporadically from one day to the next. Days where death seemed to haunt my mind as the only relief possible. Days where my body became a trap to my soul and longed to watch a sunset, have sleepovers, and make friends with kids my age, who weren’t forced to befriend me because it was a part of their job description. Days where I longed for an escape.

Three words echo in my mind: Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. It was more than a diagnosis; it was a label that disabled me, shredding my tattered childhood into slivers of memories voided beyond the sixty-four count tiled room.