The child who stared back at me wasn't me. I mean, I knew it was me but it wasn't me - if you know what I mean. The girl who looked back at me was a sickly greyish white, with drooping eyelids, no eyebrows on the massive bald cap of her head, chubby cheeks on a drawn out, exhausted body with tubes snaking into her nose and belling out of her regulation hospital nightdress. This wasn't me but then again, I wasn't sure who was before this started, who I could have been.
I'm Olivia, or Liv, for short, I'm thirteen and I'm dying.
I've been told all my life that I'm a miracle because I've lived way longer than anyone ever anticipated. I was meant to die when I was three but, somehow, I managed to survive the endless rounds of Chemotherapy, radiation, transfusions, surgeries, those seeming months at a time in hospital because my immune system was too compromised to let me out, and then wearing those horrible, itchy masks to stop a disease killing me when i was allowed to leave...
I've practically grown up in a large, revolving suite of hospital rooms because I have cancer. I've always had cancer. My life was never "normal" but my family managed to scrape by, bit by merciless bit. My cancer is called Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia or APL for short and it is chemoressitant- that means that when you given me a set treatment, you can not usually rely upon it. Like I said earlier, I'm dying. And I'm okay with it, I've always known that my cancer would kill me, just, I never knew when, and honestly, I'm fine with it, I don't mind that my cancer is killing me, slowly. But i hate hows it's killed my family just as long and just as slowly and painfully as it will kill me.
Since I got sick, everything has changed. My dad only work part time at the fire station and my mum quit her prestigious job as a class A accountant in order to keep me alive and healthy. well. alive anyway. My mum only cooks things that are organic, nutritious and GMO free, she only spends around five hours a day cleaning our five bedroom mansion of a home and while I can't say that I'm normal, I mean, I've never really been normal but there's something about dying young that is almost pathetic, I guess i didn't realise just how deeply my cancer affects me, my mum and dad, my sisters and my brother, my aunts and my uncles, my cousins... just everyone.
My siblings, under normal circumstances, would say that they hated me, well, who wouldn't? Haemorrhaging at 2 AM, developing sudden and dangerous bruises, having a chemo appt on my sister's sixteenth birthday, having a red blood cell count so low that I can't go to my brother's football game. But. Because we are the family with the daughter that is dying of cancer, people cut us slack. for example, free passes on late homework's, extra lollipops at the bank or sweetshop, free school outings... the list goes on and on. that's the only good bit really.
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Reflection in the mirror
Teen FictionI'm Olivia, I'm dying. meet Olivia, her siblings and her parents, who are all preparing for one of the biggest fights of their lives. when Liv was diagnosed with cancer, there was no cure, but now, there is a treatment on the horizon but at a c...
