Since I was in the eighth grade, my middle school and high school participated in an event known as Mini – THON. For those unfamiliar, Mini – THON is a junior version of the THON dance marathon held here at Penn State. Instead of a multi-day event, we dance for twelve hours over night, but our fundraising efforts, heart, and soul don’t suffer from the time difference. For my first three years participating, I ran various event committees. For my freshman year, I was actually in charge of a committee known as family relations, meaning I contacted local Four Diamonds families and asked them to speak at our event. While I aided these families in talking about the horror their children and family had endured, I could only imagine how they felt having a child battling through cancer. One family, as they climbed the stage and began to speak about their experiences, even asked the audience to raise their hand if they had a family member affected by cancer; I was one of the very few kids that were lucky enough to not have my hand raised.
This year, my final Mini – THON, I asked the same question. This time was different, because I had now become the family on stage talking about my brother and his battle against cancer.
January 5th, 2018, was a night that I will never forget. It was a Friday night, and I had club volleyball practice at 6 o’clock. My brother had been in and out of various hospitals and doctors’ offices for the past three months, and I was waiting for him and my mother to return home from the Penn State Hershey hospital before I left. As it became closer and closer to six, I began getting agitated that my mom wasn’t home yet. She knew I had practice and couldn’t leave our puppy until they came home, so why were they not home yet? Almost exactly at the time I would be leaving for practice, my mom and brother came through our garage door. I jumped up from our couch and braced myself for a passive aggressive conversation with my mother about how I would now be late to practice because of them. As I opened my mouth to begin complaining, I noticed something was not right. My brother’s eyes were red, as though he had been crying – something I hadn’t seen him do in eight years, when he was twelve.
As my mom noticed the growing concern on my face as I analyzed my brother, she looked me in my eyes and said “Grace, I need you to be strong for Ryan right now,”. I immediately knew that the doctor had delivered bad news, but I didn’t want to allow my brain to go off and start imagining the worst. My brother, always wanting to protect me, protested against my mom telling me the news when I should already be at volleyball practice. But I was overwhelmed with concern, and asked my mom to tell me what the doctor had said about the biopsy.
“Grace, I’m so sorry… Ryan has cancer,”.
