You were just diagnosed with cancer. The doctor takes a deep breath before explaining your diagnosis. It's complicated. He uses words you've never heard before, much less understand. His explanation is interrupted by the questions pressing against your subconscious, begging for your attention. What does this mean? How will your family take it? What about the future? And most importantly, what are you going to do?
You ask the doctor what your options are, and you ask him to explain them simply. He breaks each option down for you, and tries to frame them in a way you understand:
Option one is for the fighters, for those who have what it takes. He offers an aggressive combination of chemotherapy treatments. Six rounds, every three weeks.
Option two requires patience, as it is a grueling journey. Your tumor is operable, so you will go straight for the surgery. However, because your cancer has spread, you will need to take important steps to prepare and optimize your health.
Option three will be a real test, as you will take a holistic approach and focus on palliative care.
The choice is yours.
You ask your mom and dad. Your sisters. Your grandma. Everyone tells you that you have to fight.
You tell the doctor you're ready for the chemo, and he smiles approvingly.
He explains the debilitating side effects, which include bruising, bleeding, rash, dizziness, exhaustion, diarrhea, constipation, mouth sores, change in taste, neuropathy, hearing changes, severe muscle and joint pain, hair loss. You stop listening after hair loss.
You nod, sign some forms, and with a triumphant gaze, he shakes your hand and says let's give it everything we've got.
...
Your first round of chemo starts the following Monday at 9AM. You show up thirty minutes early. In the waiting room, frail bodies hang on plastic chairs. If these people are fighters, they must be on the losing team. Their bodies are decorated with bruises in different shades of indigo. Their bare heads match their hollow eyes, and even though they range in age, ethnicity, and gender, they have the same dingy pallor.
The receptionist calls your name, and you consider your decision again.
You walk in and see a station lined with neat rows of snacks. A nurse asks you to pick one of the twelve khaki-colored chairs that form an arc around the nurses’ desks. Six of the chairs are occupied, so you scan for an empty one quickly, careful not to stare at the bald-headed occupants draped in matching gowns before you fall in.
The nurse chokes your arm and pricks you once, twice, three times. You find out you’re a hard stick. You also learn you should consider getting a port unless you want your arms covered in black and blue islands, the final piece of the uniform donned on everyone around you. When a nurse manages to capture one of your veins, she secures it with adhesives and connects it to the huge bags hanging from the IV pole behind you. The liquid is clear and pristine, and you might assume its saline if it wasn’t for the yellow warning labels printed boldly at the top. She starts explaining what you might experience over the next few hours, but the drip drip drip of the solution lulls you to sleep.
...
You’re not sure what you were expecting, but it wasn’t a chill day eating your favorite sub, cracking jokes, and taking naps. Today feels more like a lazy Sunday than whatever you would expect from a normal, nine-hour chemo session. Everyone keeps asking if you’re okay, and you start to feel guilty that they took the day off work to be here for you.
On the ride home, everyone is quiet. They take turns shooting glances at you in the rear-view mirror. You wait for something to happen, anything to report. You worry about how easy this is and pretend to fall asleep so you don’t have to answer how you’re feeling again.
...
It happens at midnight. The pressure sliding down your lower back wakes you. You look down at your legs, expecting to see flames or a venomous creature slithering away, but your pants are intact, the same dull shade of grayish blue. You try to hold in the tears, but the howls escape your mouth before you can stop them. Searing sounds and sensations spin around the room as you convulse on the sofa. They wake up, rush to your side. Are you okay? they’re asking.
No matter how hard they push, you insist that you’re fine. You try your best to keep a straight face, but the throbbing in your lower back gets stronger. You consider massaging the area, but every pair of eyes is surveilling your entire body.
The hours drag on and your face is flushed, your arms covered in sweat. When they beg you to go to the hospital, they sound like they’re trying to reason with a toddler.
You snap at them, tell them to leave you alone. You contort your back, searching for some relief. You feel your mom pressing her palm into your legs, rubbing it in small circles. You ask her to press harder, and the circles get bigger, big enough for you to focus on the relief instead of the fire scorching through your body. You feel a smaller hand rubbing your legs, and then other hands start to knead different parts of your back. One by one they gather around you, rubbing and rubbing. You feel the muscles start to relax, the pain subsiding. You turn around and point to your hamstrings, and the hands massage your legs. Like a conductor of the next movement in the same symphony, you point to different places on your body in silence, and the hands follow, some in firm circles, others in linear movements. The unexpected patterns relieve the pressure until finally, you fall asleep.
...
The sound of a whimper jerks you awake. You look around and everyone is sleeping in uncomfortable positions around you. You realize the whimpering is coming from your mouth. You try to rub the pain away yourself. You lean forward to massage the top part of your legs, but your back starts fragmenting with every movement, waking everyone up as you start convulsing. They start massaging you again, their overworked arms moving in slower, softer motions. Harder you plead, but they’re tired, and they can no longer alleviate the pain.
Please they plead. You need to go to the hospital.
At the hospital, the nurses take turns poking you while they chat about their weekends as you lay there, covered in invisible flames. A few tears escape when you remember thinking this was too easy a few hours ago. And suddenly, as if someone extinguished the fire with a bucket of icy water, it stops. The nurse registers your amazement and answers the question on your face with Dilaudid. She continues to tell you about this magic solution but you fall asleep.
...
When you wake up, a team of doctors starts firing a bunch of questions. When did you start chemotherapy? Have you always suffered from chronic pain? Would you like to meet with the palliative care team? Do you want to be admitted to the hospital?
You only answer the last question. You want to be admitted. You turn around and let everyone answer the rest of the questions as you drift off again.
...
After four days, the episodes become less frequent. They transition you from meds through the IV to oral meds. As your doses decrease, you spend more time awake. You notice the bed is lumpy, the food is bland. You have trouble sleeping with so many machines beeping and vampires asking for your blood. You ask to go home. Before you leave, the doctor warns you that this pain might be recurring, so if you decide to continue with the chemo, you might have to come back after every round.
Of course you are going to keep fighting. So you go home, and you feel pretty good for about a week. Then it’s time for your next round of chemo. Once again, the session is a breeze. But now that you know what’s coming, you save your energy and try to enjoy the pain free day.
The pain starts sooner this time, so you go straight to the hospital. You have to sit in the ER waiting room for 3 hours. You’re embarrassed at first, but after the third hour, your sobs are louder than most of the toddlers.
Once they finally call you back, the doctor says they can give you oral pain medication. You tell him that didn’t work last time, that when the pain was this intense you needed Dilaudid. He stops addressing you directly, tells your dad people become addicted to these drugs and come in unnecessarily to get them. Between convulsions, you try to reason with him, but he insists you try oral meds before they try anything else.
After an hour, the pain only gets worse. Just when you start considering going home, there’s a shift change and the same doctor from last time comes in and changes your order. Thirty minutes later, you’re exhausted but pain free. Everything else flows as smoothly as the first time.
...
You continue through the six rounds of chemo. After each session, the side effects become more extreme. You lose your hair. Your energy. But you fight through. When you complete all six sessions, they host a ceremony where you ring the bell, indicating you won the fight. You start to think things might finally start improving, but after your CT scan, the doctor determines the cancer is spreading. He suggests you begin radiation treatments as soon as possible.
You decide to go through with the radiation. The only tomotherapy machine that fits your body requires a 45-minute drive. In the waiting room, you notice people seem stronger than everyone you’ve met at chemo. You meet your new doctor, who designs a strict regimen of thirty consecutive sessions, 20 minutes daily. He lists similar side effects to the ones you’re already experiencing so you figure things will stay the same.
You head back for your first session, and unlike chemo, you are the only one allowed in your room. You put on your gown and lie down on the machine and it slides back until the bright blue of the walls is replaced with a nauseating off-white color. Your arms are positioned directly above your head, and there is no room to move inside the tube. You start to panic again. Your breathing becomes shallower. Intrusive thoughts begin to flood your mind, and your spine begins to throb.
You’re instructed not to move, so you close your eyes and hum to yourself until it’s over.
When you’re done, the tech leaves so you can put on your clothes. Even though you’re wearing sweats, you struggle to put everything back on, so you hold on to the rail to help you balance.
You meet them in the waiting room and ask for someone to hold your hand as you walk to the car. You open the door and close your eyes, bracing yourself. You swing your left leg into the car, breathing heavily. They ask are you okay? Does it hurt? You shake your head and close your eyes, staggering into the seat. You lie your head back, trying hard to hold in the howls. But the car hits a speed bump and you let out a scream in a voice you hardly recognize.
You cry the entire 45-minute ride home. They help you walk up the steps and down the hallway into your bedroom. You collapse into your bed, and they all rub your back until I fall asleep.
You decide to do the rest of the treatments. You wake up every morning and get ready. At first, you find comfort in family breakfasts, getting ready, and choosing the music on the way, but over the next few weeks, you’re extremely nauseous, you lose your appetite, you need help raising your arms to change your clothes, and you look for any opportunity to take a nap. After every treatment, the pain intensifies, and the road back home feels like torture to everyone in the car.
The only upside is that you’re losing weight. You don’t even care about the mirror, but you hope the weight loss helps your prognosis. You complete half of your treatment on the same day you officially lose 50 pounds. The pain is so intense that you wonder if you’ve lost enough weight to stop mid treatment and revisit the idea of surgery.
You continue with the radiation treatments. One of the other patients shares that he is always nauseous too, and that the only thing he can keep down are smoothies from blenders. Much to your protests, they take you to get one after your session and after you get home and relieve some of the pressure in your back, you drink the entire smoothie. You feel better than you have in weeks. You add the smoothies to your daily routine; wake up, eat two crackers. Get dressed. Car ride. Music. Sign-in. Put on gown. Slide back into the machine. Get dressed, again. Car ride. Nausea. Speed bumps. Berry smoothie. Rub rub rub rub rub. Sleep.
You finally complete all 30 treatments. On your follow-up appointment, the CT scan reveals that the tumor shrunk on one side, but grew on the other. The doctor refers you to City of Hope, a hospital that specializes in cancer treatment.
You meet with three new doctors, who call themselves your oncology team. The surgical oncologist explains the extent of your condition. He tells you you have Stage IV, metastatic cancer and not only do you have a basketball-sized tumor pressing on your spine, but you have several enflamed lymph nodes to which the cancer has spread. He looks you in the eyes and tells you that you’re young, as if you didn’t know, and he insists that if you choose surgery, he is confident he can get all the cancer. You look around and for once, they are silent, waiting for your decision.
The doctors tell you that your tumor is operable. That’s supposed to be good news. You nod while they explain the benefits of going straight to surgery. You’re told it’s the most direct path. They use words like removal, margin, clear edges, localized. They don’t say cure.
You ask what happens after. They exchange a look before explaining that because of where the tumor is and how fast it grew, there’s a chance it has already spread. They say they need to run more tests to make sure surgery is still the best first step.
You nod again. It sounds like a plan. But you’re already tired. The kind of tired that seeps into your bones. The kind of tired that makes words like pre-op clearance and anesthesia risk sound as surreal as a fantasy novel.
Later, you tell your family you’re going to “have the surgery.” It sounds simple when you say it that way. Like a single stone on a long trail. But you know now that this trail has forks and false turns. You also know that walking it will cost you.
Still, you decide to prepare. After all, this is a journey.
The doctors call it a “complication.” You wait for something dramatic, maybe a new tumor, another organ collapsing under the pressure, but instead, the problem is you. Your body.
After a week of tests, they explain that while the tumor is operable, the surgery is too risky, not for everyone, but for you. Not because the tumor is too advanced, but because your weight makes everything more dangerous: anesthesia, bleeding, healing.
They try to say it gently, but the edge in their voice hits hard. You need to lose fifty pounds before we can proceed.
You don’t respond right away. You try to stay inside your body while they explain. Your body, the one they’ve just identified as both victim and obstacle. The one they’re saying has to shrink in order to survive.
You want to scream. You want to ask how they expect you to lose fifty pounds while your organs are being strangled by a tumor. You want to say you came here for help, not for homework. But instead, you nod like a good patient. You nod like someone who deserves care, but only if you earn it.
Later, you stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror. You press your palm against your belly, trying to imagine it flatter, lighter, safer. You think about every diet you’ve ever failed. You think about all the ways your body has always been too much.
And while you feel a familiar shame, you also feel rage. You didn’t ask for this tumor. You didn’t ask for this body to be politicized, pathologized. You just wanted to live.
And now they’re telling you that to live, you must lose part of yourself.
Even though you’ve walked this path before, the cycle of loss and return, this time the terrain feels different. It’s no longer about fitting into old clothes or earning praise from others. Now, the stakes are mapped onto your spine, your organs, your future.
The doctors say you need to lose fifty pounds before surgery is even an option. So, you treat it like a pilgrimage. A trek. A sacred passage through your own resistance.
You start small: oatmeal for breakfast, steamed vegetables for lunch, grilled chicken for dinner. No added sugar. You cut your portions in half. Measure everything. You start keeping a food journal, not to punish yourself, but to mark your trail.
Your family rallies. Your sister offers to help you cook. Your mom and dad join you for morning walks around the block. Everyone follows your diet.
You create rituals. You say a silent prayer before each meal. You listen to music that makes your body feel light. But there are days you want to quit. Nights when the hunger gnaws at your sleep. You dream about navigating to the kitchen for countless snacks. But when you remember this is the journey. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to change you.
And you’ve already begun.
The weight begins to melt off. You watch the numbers drop on the scale like mile markers, each one proof that you’re moving forward. You start to feel lighter—not just in your body, but in your resolve. People notice. They cheer you on. Your doctor tells you you’re doing well, keep going.
After a few weeks, the journey shifts.
You wake up sore in places that shouldn’t be sore. Your stomach cramps after every meal. You try to stretch, but even walking around the house leaves you breathless. You begin to dread food, not because you’re not hungry, but because everything you eat seems to punish you.
You start skipping meals. You tell yourself it’s a strategy, not starvation. You tell yourself pain means progress. You try to push through.
But the pain sharpens. It curls itself around your abdomen and sinks down like a stone. You start to miss your walks. You miss your Sunday cooking sessions. You miss the part of yourself that was starting to feel proud.
One night, you curl into yourself on the floor of the bathroom, holding your belly, whispering just breathe over and over, like a prayer. Your younger sister finds you. She kneels beside you, rubs your back, and asks if you want to keep going.
You don’t answer. Because you don’t know. This journey was supposed to save you. Now, it’s breaking you open.
You decide to push through.
You remind yourself that a journey isn’t meant to be easy. It’s meant to test your endurance, your resolve. You tell your family you can handle it, that you’re just sore, that the bleeding last week was a fluke, that the pain is manageable.
They don’t believe you, but they let you walk anyway.
Your sisters start checking in more often. One texts you reminders to eat. The other keeps sending soups and articles about anemia. Your dad starts coming home at noon, hovering around you, quiet but watchful, as if he’s waiting to catch you when you fall.
You try to stay the course. You eat less. You move slower. You chant little mantras in your head: This is progress. This is the path. I am getting closer.
But then it happens.
The pain hits like a lightning strike to your abdomen, sharp, sudden, unrelenting. You make it to the bathroom and feel a gush of blood before your knees buckle.
You scream.
They come running. Your sisters wrap you in towels. Your dad cradles your head and yells for someone to call 911. You can’t see clearly, but you hear the panic in their voices. You feel their hands trying to hold you together, as if sheer willpower could stop the bleeding.
You fade fast. The last thing you hear is your sister saying, “We should’ve taken her to the hospital.”
The road you were on has collapsed.
But you’re still here, breathing, but barely.
You wake to chaos. The house is filled with footsteps, whispered arguments, the rustling of clothes being thrown into a bag. Someone’s on the phone. Someone’s crying.
Your dad is by your side. “The ambulance is here, mija.”
You blink slowly. Your mom’s voice echoes from the hallway; sharp, worried, trying not to sound scared. Your sisters hover behind her, wide-eyed, waiting for a signal that it’s okay to fall apart.
You’re wheeled out to flashing lights, but your vision is too blurry to hold.
At the hospital, they run labs and press cold instruments against your skin. The room is too bright, your head too heavy. A doctor walks in and starts listing numbers like they’re weather forecasts.
“You’re bleeding internally. Your hemoglobin is dangerously low. If we don’t do emergency surgery now, you could lose too much blood.”
You ask about the weight. You’ve only lost fifteen pounds. Isn’t that too risky? You’re supposed to wait. You were trying. You had a plan.
The doctor shakes his head. “Your body doesn’t have time to wait. We need to stop the bleeding now.”
Your mom squeezes your hand. “We’ll be right here,” she says, but her voice cracks.
Your dad’s tears flow freely down his cheeks. Your sisters wipe their faces and nod like they’re okay.
You try to believe them.
You try to believe this, too, is part of the journey.
But mostly, you’re scared.
And tired of detours.
You agree to the surgery. There’s no other path now, no detour, no pause. Just this next steep climb.
They explain the plan only after they’ve prepped you, your gown open in the back, the lights above too white, too close.
To stop the bleeding, they’ll burn the tissues around the tumor. But those tissues are tangled with nerves, and if they burn too far in, you may lose the ability to hold your bladder forever.
You need to be awake. You need to tell them if you feel the burning.
Your mom nearly faints when she hears. Your dad paces the hallway like he’s preparing for a fight he can’t enter. Your sisters argue with the nurse, ask for other options, ask why you weren’t told sooner. But there is no fork in the trail. The road leads only forward.
You lie still on the table. The cold of the metal seeps into your bones. A nurse holds your hand.
You try to focus on the rhythm of your breath, on what this means: that you are still moving. Still choosing. Still climbing, even if the ground disappears beneath you.
You close your eyes and whisper: I’ll tell them if it burns.
This is the part of the journey they don’t write songs about.
But your family waits outside the doors, willing to carry you if they must.
And that, somehow, keeps you steady.
When the surgery ends, the first thing you feel is the pressure in your bladder. You panic. Then you realize, you can still hold it. You laugh. This feels like a huge victory. You didn’t lose control. You didn’t lose yourself. The doctor returns, face tired but calm. “It was a success,” he says. They stopped the bleeding. They burned the tissue just enough. You’re told you have to stay flat on your back for eight hours, no turning, no shifting. After being awake for surgery, you think, this should be easy.
It’s not.
The pain that creeps in isn’t sharp, it’s deep, buried in the muscles and nerves that have already endured too much. Your back begins to scream. Your mouth follows. Your legs ache from stillness. Time stretches into something unbearable. Your parents take turns sitting beside you. Your mom reads from her prayer book. Your dad tries to make you laugh. But nothing helps. You feel like a rock trapped under another rock, each second heavier than the last.
You beg them to let you turn. They exchange panicked looks. You tell them to stop looking at each other. To stop making decisions for you. To just stop and let you fucking turn. They hold you down, making sure you stay put. You begin to sob. You whisper a plea, ask your dad to let you turn just for a little, and despite the pain in his face, you tell him if he loved you, he would let you turn.
A nurse walks by. She dims the lights. Places a hand gently on your shoulder. She asks you what your favorite place in the whole world is. You tell her it's Disneyland. She describes a trip using elaborate details. Disneyland, the word alone feels like color. Like movement. Like being somewhere that isn’t a waiting room or a hospital bed. You imagine Main Street glittering in the afternoon light, music wafting through the air from nowhere and everywhere. The scent of buttered popcorn, of waffles, of sun-warmed asphalt and kids with melted ice cream running down their hands. You imagine laughter that doesn’t hurt your ribs, standing in line just because you can, not because a nurse told you to wait. You see yourself there, not the sick version, not the in-between one. The after version. The one who made it. Who walks through the turnstile wearing a sweatshirt two sizes too big and a pair of Minnie ears because she earned them. You picture the castle. Not as a fantasy, but as a destination. The goal at the end of this impossible road. The reward for every test, every pill, every scan, every sharp breath and sleepless night. You want to walk toward it not in a dream, but in real life. One step at a time. With your sisters beside you, your mom snapping pictures, your dad offering to ride the rollercoaster with you.
You don’t want a miracle. You want a day pass.
And maybe that’s enough. Maybe Disneyland isn’t just a place you go to escape. Maybe it’s a place you go to arrive. This doesn’t fix it, but it steadies you. And that, you realize, is part of the journey too. Not just surviving, but letting others walk the hard parts with you.
At your follow-up, the doctor doesn’t mince words: “We need to begin treatment again, right away.”
You nod, already exhausted. You’ve made it so far. Climbed through pain, crawled through detours. Lost things you didn’t think you could lose. Gained fears you didn’t know how to name.
Now, you’re back at the same crossroads. The doctor lays out the two clearest trails: chemotherapy or radiation. He speaks like a guide charting familiar terrain, but you know better, these are no longer paths toward recovery. They are maintenance roads. Detours. Delays.
Your family sits with you in the room, your mom rubbing circles on your back, your dad holding your insurance card like it’s a passport, your sisters cross-referencing treatments centers on their phones. They’re ready for another climb. But something inside you isn’t.
You look at the map they’ve given you, but all you can see is the place you’ve already passed: the emergency bleeds, the fasting, the regimens, the rituals, the prayers.
You whisper, “Is there another way?”
But in your bones, you already know.
Conventional medicine feels like stepping into a battlefield you never trained for. The words chemo, radiation, and surgery sound violent, invasive, and arduous. You imagine your body as a war zone or an unfinished road, and you wonder if there’s another way, one that doesn’t demand so much destruction.
Everyone you talk to tells you stories. Your uncle’s friend prayed his tumor away. Your friend’s mom brings over herbal supplements that healed her mother. Your cousin lived ten years with a tumor that never spread, just yoga and positive thinking. Your old boss tells you sugar is the real killer and she helped her friend starve her tumor.
These stories make more sense than the doctor’s careful caution: “There’s limited scientific evidence.” You hear the words but don’t let them settle. You don’t want numbers. Numbers don’t make sense. You want hope, and these words sound friendly and familiar.
You imagine yourself taking a different test, not one with right or wrong answers, but one of endurance, belief, and discipline. You begin researching herbs, diets, energy cleanses. You ask your mom to pray over you. You open yourself to the possibility that maybe the solution isn’t in the lab, but somewhere in your bloodstream, your faith, your daily rituals.
You think, maybe if you can cleanse yourself deeply enough, if you align everything, mind, body, and soul, this tumor will shrink. Maybe, if you study the right things, you can pass this test.
You sit with the hard truth: treatment might prolong your life, but at what cost? You’ve seen the wreckage chemo leaves behind; hair in the drain, skin too tender to touch, bruises all over your body, the distant stare of someone bracing for pain. You think maybe there’s another way. A way to heal instead of hurt.
You decide to try a holistic path. You tell your loved ones you’re choosing comfort, presence, and quality. You want to spend your days making meals, taking walks, sitting in sunlight, laughing with your family, not in waiting rooms hooked to bags of poison.
Your primary oncologist raises an eyebrow during your next visit.
“So you’re… what? Going to eat the tumor away?”
His words are a joke, but the edge is sharp.
You tell him you’re consulting a nutritional specialist. That you’re focusing on creating a better lifestyle.
He exhales, long and tired. “There’s no evidence that food alone will treat this. You can do whatever you want, but don’t confuse wellness with medicine.”
You nod, but inside you want to scream. You know the science. You’ve read the statistics. But you also know your body, and you want to treat it like it’s more than a battleground.
The specialist puts you on a carnivore diet. No sugar. No starches. No compromise. She says tumors feed on sugar, that fasting and fat might be your sharpest tools. It’s restrictive. It’s weird. But it’s also the first time something feels like a plan you chose.
You begin to lose weight. Slowly. Deliberately.
You cook your meals. Walk every morning. Sit outside. You feel tired, but clearer. You try to believe this is helping. That this, too, is a kind of test. And maybe, just maybe, you’re already passing.
You decide to join a gym, not for weight loss or transformation, but for movement. Breath. Connection. To have somewhere to go other than doctor’s appointments. You sign up for a yoga class three times a week. The instructor ends each session with a soft namaste, and you lie in savasana pretending your body is a place you’ve always felt safe.
After class, you linger. You start making small talk with the other students, mostly older women in patterned leggings and oversized t-shirts. They trade tips like recipes: turmeric shots, infrared saunas, celery juice on an empty stomach. One woman swears by a three-day watermelon cleanse. Another tells you her niece drank only broth for a week and “felt her tumor shrink.”
You nod politely, unsure whether to take notes or retreat. But you don’t leave. You’re here for possibilities, not certainty.
One afternoon, while refilling your water bottle, you run into an older woman folding her mat. She asks how you’re doing,not the kind of small talk that expects a short answer, but the kind that feels like permission.
You tell her you’re sick. You say it softly, like a confession.
She nods with slow understanding and says, “Mija, you need a limpia.”
She explains: a traditional cleansing. To draw out what doesn’t belong. Bad energy. Fear. Grief. Pain that isn’t just physical. “Sometimes, the spirit gets sick before the body does.”
You don’t know what you believe, but her words make something inside you quiet down. Not healed—but still.
You agree to meet her Sunday. You don’t know what to expect. But isn’t that the nature of a test?
You tell your mom the pain is getting worse. That it’s hard to eat, hard to sleep. That you’ve tried everything you know how to try.
She doesn’t hesitate. “Vamos a la iglesia.”
She doesn’t mean the fancy church they just built. She means the little one down the street, the one that smells like lemon floor cleaner and rose oil, where women cry during worship and everyone sings slightly off key.
You sit beside her in a wooden pew, the seat cracked and warm. The service starts, and the music vibrates through your chest. You don’t sing, but you close your eyes. You try to pray, even though the words don’t come out right.
Someone lays a hand on your shoulder. Then another. A small circle of strangers gathers around you. Their voices rise, not in chaos, but in unison. They begin to pray, fervently, their hands pressing into your back, your arms, your forehead.
You try to believe. You want to believe. You whisper please to no one in particular.
And then…pain.
Excruciating, white-hot, sudden. A bolt straight through your spine. You gasp, your knees buckling under the weight of it.
They hold you upright. They keep praying. You try not to scream. You think: Is this a sign? Is this part of the healing? Or just proof that nothing’s working?
But you stay.
Because leaving now would mean giving up on something.
And you’re not ready to say this test is over.
You don’t want to go back to the hospital. You say it again and again, and eventually, they stop asking.
The pain keeps you curled on the couch, quiet, trembling. Your mom walks in with a bottle of Tylenol and a warm towel. She presses it against your back and begins to massage in small, familiar circles. You say nothing, and she doesn’t ask.
You fall asleep like that, her hand still on your back.
When you wake up, the pain is different. Not gone, but duller, like it took a few steps back. You sit up slowly and take a sip of water. Your head feels clearer. You almost convince yourself you’re okay.
But your mom sees you wince as you shift.
“Ya mija,” she says gently. “No puedes sola.”
Your sisters nod. Your dad grabs your jacket and puts on your shoes.
They’re not waiting for permission anymore.
You know what this means.
This is still part of the test. Knowing when to try something new and when to surrender.
You take one last look at the couch before stepping outside, and for a moment, you wonder: What if this time, the pain doesn’t go away?
You decide your body needs something more. Something natural. Something powerful. You tell your mom you’re done with the hospital for now. She doesn’t argue, but her silence is heavy.
Your friend’s mom, Estela, comes over with a bag full of bottles and a plastic bin of powdered supplements. “Three people I know took these,” she tells you. “They’re fine now. One didn’t even need treatments or surgery.”
She pulls out tiny vials, freezer packs of bone broth, bright orange pills, and a complicated regimen written on notebook paper. She smiles like this is a gift. A secret. A cure.
You’re overwhelmed, but you can’t help but feel hopeful. You ask how much it’ll cost. She doesn’t flinch when she says “just seventeen hundred a month.”
Your sisters look at each other, then at you. You tell them not to tell mom and dad, but they don’t hear you. One of them offers to skip summer classes and give you the money. The other says she’ll sell some stuff online. The two are calculating how much is in their savings.
You want to say no.
But you also want to live.
And this feels like something you can try without being cut, poisoned, or burned.
You tell them you’ll figure it out.
That this test isn’t over yet.
You decide to try the regimen. The cost, the powders, the promises. It’s all part of the test. A test not just of faith, but of endurance.
Your sisters don’t hesitate. They pull all of the necessary funds for two months. They create a spreadsheet to track every capsule, cleanse, tincture, and meal plan. They keep a record of your progress.
“Whatever you need,” they say. “We’ve got you.”
You want to believe that discipline and love are enough to heal a body. You want to believe that if you pass this test, if you do everything right, your body will reward you.
But the pain returns. And it’s louder now.
Three episodes in five days.
The last one hits while you’re at the gym, stretching gently after a yoga class. You don’t even have time to explain, just a sharp cry, a collapse.
Your sisters rush in like a rescue team, wrapping you in jackets and blankets, holding you as you make your way to the car. One drives. The rest hold you and try to calm your trembling body.
You try not to cry. They’ve invested so much. You don’t want them to think you’re failing.
But in your chest, you feel the truth; sometimes, even when you do everything right, the answer is still pain.
You stop going to the gym. The episodes are getting closer together, sharper, meaner. You try to keep up the supplements, the teas, the rituals, but your body is no longer cooperating.
Your sisters are making all of your meals. Your mom packs them in glass containers labeled by day. Your dad brings home every remedy he hears about, anything that might help relieve the pain. They’re all trying.
But the pain doesn’t care. It keeps arriving, uninvited. You spend more time in bed. Less time pretending this is working.
One afternoon, after a particularly bad episode, you decide to make an appointment with your family doctor. She listens carefully, nodding, taking notes. She doesn’t scold you. She doesn’t mock the path you chose.
When you finish explaining, she leans forward and says, “I think it’s time we get new scans.”
Just like that, you realize the test has changed. It’s no longer about proving you can do this on your own. Now, it’s about knowing when to ask for the next question.
The scans don’t lie.
There it is: the shadow creeping wider, darker, meaner than before. It has found new corners of your body to claim. It has studied you while you’ve studied it. It waited patiently through each powder, each cleanse, each act of faith. Now, it moves with purpose.
Your doctor says, “It’s spreading.”
The words settle into the room like smoke. Your mom grips your knee. Your sisters freeze. Your dad stares at the floor.
You realize this test was never one you could pass. It wasn’t about merit or discipline or faith. It was about delay. Hope as a holding pattern.
You did your best. You tried everything. But now even your family doesn’t resist. They all look at you, not with disappointment, but with a shared knowing.
“Whatever happens next,” your dad says, “we’re with you.”
And you nod. Because finally, you understand. This isn’t failure. This is the answer.
You’re in the pre-op room. The walls are cold. The light is fluorescent and indifferent. But you’ve never felt more certain. Every metaphor ends here.
The fight couldn’t stop it. The journey couldn’t outwalk it. The test couldn’t outlast it.
This was the destination the whole time.
You see it now: the chemo chair, the yoga mat, the emergency room gurney, all pit stops along a route that narrowed, again and again, until only one way forward remained.
Your family is with you. Your mom kisses your forehead and whispers a prayer. Your dad stands tall, hand on your shoulder like armor. Your sisters huddle around you, ready to carry you every step of the way if need be.
The surgeon enters. He gives you a reassuring nod. “We’ll face this next step together,” he says. His voice is calm, but the weight in the room doesn’t lift.
You want to ask him something, but the anesthesia is already working its way through your veins.
The beeping of machines fades. The air thickens. The light softens.
And then…nothing. But even in the blur, you understand. This isn’t the end, it’s the threshold.