The past few days have been rough, to say the least. Wednesday night I had my first Thon meeting, something I was looking forward to greatly. I wasn’t disappointed, and had a great time, leaving the meeting in a wonderful mood. However, the rest of the night was not so great. I couldn’t sleep for an unknown reason, and once I finally did, I had a terrible dream about my brother. When I woke up that morning, I was so shaken that I reached out to my mom. We texted for a bit, and then she told me to call her later that night. However, when I called my house at around 9:00 PM, a time everyone should be home, the phone just kept ringing. I took to Life360 (my mother is insane and tracks me) and saw that my whole family was at the Hershey Medical Center. I immediately texted my mom, wondering why they were there, and why no one told me. When she called me on her cell phone, I finally got answers. My brother was in the hospital yet again because one of his four treatments had given him a blood clot in his liver.

Upon doing some research, I’ve discovered that blood clots are a common side effect of cancer treatments, and stomach cancer is one of the types that see clots the most. What I wish I hadn’t seen when researching was the fact that these clots can often be fatal. Another aspect that worried me was the fact that most articles said that the clots were in the patient’s arms or legs. Given that, why did my brother have one in a vital organ? My mom told me that it’s because he’s receiving multiple treatments that are attacking his immune system, and that clots are more common after treatment than during. While I took this news very hard, my mom tried to reassure me that this was a “fixable problem”.

I then asked my mom why no one thought they should tell me that my brother is in the hospital again because he has a live blood clot… her response was quite disheartening. She said “Grace, we don’t want you to worry. This is a fixable problem. Whenever there is something serious, a problem that isn’t fixable, we will let you know,”. It took me a minute to process what my mom had just said. I understood that my brother didn’t want me worrying about him while I was at school, and my mom probably didn’t mean anything by her explanation. But all I heard was the second half, in which I was told I would be notified when things get bad. It seemed to me that now, for maybe the first time on this journey, my mom was acknowledging that things would in fact get worse.