girl in vrchat talks about her cancer diagnosis

i feel like people don't ask about it because they're too afraid and i think that's funny there's a time before that time and there's a time after that time and like all other time now is relative to that time anything that happened after is after i was sick and anything before was before i was sick the sickness was sort of like this enlightenment or like this period of time i just base my entire life off of now it's like the center and then everything else just branches out which is kind of weird i applied to this job i didn't think i would get it and then i got it and i was really excited this was a job that i'd been wanting since college this was something that my professors didn't think i could do and i was really excited about it and i was doing this really cool work and i had ideas i went out with my friends and it was really fun and i was just starting to get to know these girls that are really cool and i was at this fun like dance party basically for emos i was starting to lose my breath i was like oh my god i can't i can't breathe i can't dance the way i used to and i can't party the way i used to like what's wrong with me i'm i'm 20 i'm almost 24 it must be i'm getting old christmas day i threw up everything you know i thought it was just like a little sick because i throw up a lot it's my thing i i love throwing up yeah they was just like oh she throws up a lot it's fine let's go get some nausea or something it felt like somebody was putting daggers in my stomach towards the end of the week i felt like i couldn't do anything i was crying and i was like i'm so sick i can't do anything i gotta go get tested or something so i went to the little clinic they took my blood and they had me breathe in a bag and all this stuff and then i never heard back from them and by that time i definitely had leukemia if they got the blood test they would be like you have leukemia go to an emergency room or go to a hospital they never called me back the person who ran the place i grew up with i went to school with her daughter she took care of me a lot these people took care of me so it was really weird i called them on the weekend nothing happened so i went to an er that night they tested a bunch of stuff they tested my gastrointestinal stuff they tested my blood we were joking around like haha i might have cancer haha you know i was like joking around at the doctor they told me that my white blood cell count was very high but they didn't tell me what it was i was in such a good place i just got this job that i've been wanting for so long my dream job basically it just crushed me i was just like this isn't happening to me this can't happen to me i'm like 23 or how old was i it's 24 i was 24. this can't be happening it's a bunch of this weird psychological stuff where it wasn't i did feel sick but i didn't think it would be that bad i've always sort of been very positive and had a positive outlook and i'm very energetic so it like it just seemed like such a such a punch in the gut literally because i was throwing up all the time so i went into the er apparently i was anemic so i needed blood so they got me hooked up to an iv right away and they put me on blood i got there probably around midnight and then probably a couple hours in after they did some more testing there was a lady who was an oncologist um or she was she was a flambota from you know wombo wambalet flambotology what's the one for blood what's the ology for blood uh hematologist oh my god that's like completely off of whatever i was trying to conjure she was extremely gorgeous i remember her coming and i was just like who is this hot person trying to talk to me like i get really nervous around hot people and i'm just like oh geez she came by my side and she told me and i started crying there's two types of acute leukemia that you can have so she was telling me like you'll either be in the hospital for a month and then have a bunch of chemo sessions after that or you'll be in the hospital for two years and you'll have to go back and forth and do all this stuff and that's for al and i was crying i called my mom and i called brian my boyfriend and and then i took an ambulance to another hospital they have like their own ward an entire floor for cancer patients so i went there there was a certain point where i was just really hungry so i was kind of over it over like the whole illness thing and i just wanted food and like crackers and stuff so the ems folks that took me to the other hospital i gave me some crackers and i was just like thank you i still have not paid off that bill i will never pay off that bill it was uh new year's eve that night every time they would give me food i would just throw up and the girl who took care of me was like really sweet and she was pregnant also i just want to do a quick shout out to st david south i think they are the nicest people i've ever met in my entire life they did everything me and another girl which i'll probably go into later we were the only two 20 year olds there this other girl i'm just gonna i'm gonna name her something else um i'm gonna name her amanda i know i wanted to be her friend very bad but i didn't know her boundaries so talking to her was sometimes awkward for me because i was like i don't know where can i go like you know it's so weird midnight whenever the ball dropped i was like throwing up in my room and that was going from 2017 to 2018. my sister was there and my mom drove up really quickly and brian was there and it was so hard to watch them cry over me i got chemo for like a week and a half and you just fill up with liquid so i looked kind of like the michelin boy just huge cheeks and like big bubbly body parts there was just so much fluid and chemo and like i still had an iv drip that i was getting fluid from too the first week was chemo week and a half was chemo but after that you're neutropenic which is basically like your immune system it's not working for you if you left there are so many things in the world that will make you sick if you're neutropenic because you don't have an immune system that can fight off those things so you have to stay in the hospital there was like a couple days before i started because i have to put the port on you which is a surgery do a bone marrow biopsy which is when they take a bit of your bone from your pelvis and they examine it so they take you out for that they put me on some drugs that made me sleep for the whole day a lot of the restrictions were very similar to pregnancy my sister-in-law was pregnant at the time it was cool to be like oh you can't eat that i can't eat that i couldn't drink although i did a little bit i couldn't eat from restaurants unless it was hospital food if i got food poisoning i would have to go to the er and then to the hospital and then i would have a fever and then i would be sick and there's like a possibility that you could die just because your immune system isn't as strong as it is usually although it's not as bad as like being keto or something or i don't know it's not always like honestly having leukemia i tried it like for two weeks and it was so much worse part of it is like the chemo it takes away your sense of taste so things don't taste as good you don't want to eat ever like your appetite's really bad these little things became exponentially bigger because you realize you can't do them so there was once i was like looking out of a window and i saw a ladybug and i was like oh my god that's like the first bug besides a fruit fly i've seen in so long it's like those little things you sort of catch on to and you grab onto and you're like yes i got to do that today at this point i was still at work being like hey yeah i'm online i'm i'm i'm work working i'm trying to do air clothes but they didn't want me to i think they were just giving me projects to give me projects at that point like yeah get this done they were just entertaining my belief that i was working even though i really wasn't your brain when you're on chemo it has trouble recalling things recalling words in like your long-term memory there would be times where i couldn't remember words and you just sort of have this brain fog and you can't really focus i would try to read some comic books my friends kept giving me comic books because i love comics i like to make them sometimes i would start reading like two pages and i'd be like i can't focus i have to go back and read the same thing over and over again before it like clicks in my brain that it is communicating an idea to me so i couldn't read i had a birthday party turned 25 while i was in my first month in the hospital people came in the evenings after work and stuff i could tell they really cared but they didn't know how to support me or do anything and people would just give me stuff i just had so much stuff and i was like i don't i don't want any more things because i can't do anything right now anyway like my brain is is so fried and i couldn't eat any food and then people tried to send me flowers but i can't have flowers apparently flowers can easily bring in other illnesses people would be like i sent you flowers but um i never saw them i honestly just couldn't even see them like they would not let them go past a certain point in the hospital that first month sort of feels like all at one time for me now even though it felt like it happened forever while i was in there like it's almost all one day it was so monotonous so we had this birthday party and it was actually pretty cute and my aunt made my favorite cake my dad was able to bring it up from my hometown it was really good and we watched blade runner because i was like we're going to watch blade runner i have cancer no one can tell me no so we watched blade runner and amanda came we were starting to talk a little bit more at that point like when i saw her i would say hi because there was this one room where everyone could go in and like hang out and she was taking the same drug that i was taking it's called midastorin and it made me nauseous and so we started talking about that and stuff she actually moved to austin six months before she was diagnosed from the east coast which was insane to me and she had a waitress job she didn't have insurance and i did um i don't know i felt kind of bad for having insurance and she didn't her family was having to pay everything out of pocket which sucks her family was really funny and nice and um and she seemed to be like a lot more outgoing than i was she would joke around with the nurses more i'm really outgoing until a certain point and then i just shut off and i don't want to be bothered but she could be on all the time you know even if she was feeling sick you know she would be sort of open to that kind of thing you're shuffled around so often you're talking to a nurse every couple of hours you have to sort of stick to these routines we never had that moment where we just talked for two hours people are bothering you all day sometimes you just don't want people to bother you she didn't know a lot of people in austin and so i don't think she had as many visitors i didn't really think about that until much later on and i kind of feel bad that i didn't initiate more with her until much later she was admitted to the hospital i think a few days before i was for me i always thought we were on these parallel paths like if i got through something she would get through it and she got through something that i would get through it because we were almost like the same person in different worlds almost one of my old co-workers set up a gofundme which is so sweet even though i had insurance insurance only covers a certain percentage up to a certain point and so i still had to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket i had like five different doctors at one point and they were all charging in different ways so there's no like one set place where all this debt is coming from my doctor was actually really great he wasn't like hiding statistics from me or anything but he was very good about not focusing on the statistical data of like people dying or people having a bad time or like how bone marrow transplants really do [ __ ] you up my doctor was very good about being like no but there's a brighter side to this he was very good about hiding some of the information just just so i could get through it without worrying too much about myself which was great that first month my mood was very positive it was sort of later on that it sort of deteriorated i was in the hospital from december to january i leave the hospital on january 30th or 31st because you have these weeks you recover from the chemo and you have your immune system back you get to go home so you have these few weeks in between each round of chemo where you feel like normal and i got home it was great i got to go to work i got to go eat out i got to go hang out with my friends i i was just bald i was bald and hanging out with my friends and it felt great and when i left it was oh shoot i said her rolling when i left amanda was still in the hospital and that did make me feel bad that made me feel when i left i gave her i had this print on my door that i did it was a screen print of the feeling of homesickness that i felt for my hometown i gave it to her and i was like you're getting out of this you're getting out of here i got out of here you're getting out of here you basically have four more rounds of chemo after that where you're in the hospital for five days while you're getting the chemo because it's like every 12 hours you're getting chemo and then you're off for 12 hours and you get chemo for 12 hours again usually people who have other types of cancers they just go to a clinic where you would go get your chemo and then you would leave but since i was getting chemo so often they just had me admitted to the hospital during those times february i went back to the hospital and it felt weird because i was only there for a week so it's a different room it was a room i wasn't familiar with at all it was all different i didn't like it i did get to see all my favorite nurses and stuff and that was really cool after you get out of the second round of chemo you have to go home you leave and go home and then you come back a day later to the oncologist's office and they give you the shot that basically boosts your immune system and the reason why they don't do it in that first round is because if they boost your immune system and you still are not in remission you still have cancer in your bones it will just resurge so you'll just get cancer all over again i don't know it was really annoying i would feel really good and then go back and then i'd feel really good and go back couldn't eat out my mom would make food and she's my mom's a beautiful lady great person she can't cook she did when i was growing up i thought that was really good but once uh food youtube started being a thing like i learned a lot of things and i was a better cook at that time so i was just like ew mom's food not saying that she's better that i'm better than her but she could learn some things while i was getting chemo my grandpa died and we knew this was happening we just didn't know when it was while i was getting chemo so by the time his funeral was around i would be neutropenic and wouldn't be able to go anywhere that round of chemo i was just like hanging out and i was watching star wars i was drawing adam driver and i was so focused on drawing [ __ ] adam driver i was sitting in such a weird way in this chair that i actually got a bed sore and when i went home we had to like clean it and sanitize it all the time and then it got infected i ended up getting really sick i had a fever it was it was my worst nightmare because when you get a neutropenic fever and you're in your house you have to go to the emergency room right away because your body can't fight it and they pump you up with a bunch of antibiotics so i got a fever from this bedsore i felt so stupid i thought i would be able to get out by the time his funeral came around because usually neutropenic fevers last three days that's a typical one they kept giving me antibiotics and they kept giving me antibiotics and i didn't know what what to do my sister ended up recording the funeral but i i don't remember it i was on so many drugs i'd never felt before that i was gonna die i was so in and out at some point they had me on a ventilator these machines are pushing oxygen into your throat just so you can breathe i think they put me on fentanyl or something and i don't remember anything there were a few days in the hospital i don't my life is gone i can't remember it and that's scary it it's like you died even though people were experiencing things around you you don't remember that experience you don't remember it so you're basically dead my sister showed me the slide show that my aunt made for my grandpa's funeral like three times and i only remember the third time that she showed me it made me really hate being ill it's not just like woe is me it's also [ __ ] this this is so stupid and you almost feel like a teenager trying to rebel against your own body i ended up having like two more rounds of chemo after that throughout this entire time i was texting my friend amanda she went back to the east coast and was doing treatment there she had a bone marrow transplant she had host versus graft disease so the host is her the host was denying bone marrow that she got from her sister her body was rejecting it and so she had to go back to the hospital for like long periods of time and i i just checked in on her a lot after my chemo and everything i ended up getting out i didn't want to do that ever again but at the same time it didn't feel that satisfying you have the big round and then you have the four smaller chemos afterwards four smaller rounds and then after you're done with a round of chemo and you're neutropenic again you still have to go to the oncologist three times a week monday wednesday and friday my mom or my boyfriend would take me to the oncologist and i would have to get my blood tested and then i would have to sit there and wait for the results tests would tell me if i was neutropenic if i needed plasma or if i needed blood your body in that point is not it's not creating its own blood it's like a second job at that point do i need blood okay if i need blood i'm gonna feel like [ __ ] god dang it's a friday so that means they're not gonna test me until monday i have to go beg somebody to give me a blood transfusion so i don't feel shitty for the entire weekend and there was a time where i was just like dressing up to go get my blood taken that's the only thing i really had i was pretty much done with chemo by the time august 2018 rolled around i went to new york for work was getting treatment and her family lived very close to new york she went to the same bookstore that i was in like earlier that day and i was like oh oh my god you're in new york you're in new york right now and then she was down the street from me i was at this work we were having a happy hour and she was down the street from me and i was like what the [ __ ] i couldn't catch her because i was just like talking to my coworkers for the first time this is the first time i've ever met them it had been a year since i've gotten this job already but i've never been to new york so i couldn't talk to some of the designers that i've been working with for so long and i can't believe i missed her and i was so angry at myself i went to new york in 2019 probably like six times so i was like i'll catch her i'll catch her soon anytime she would have an experience that i experienced i would talk to her about it if she posted her blood stats statistics for that day or something like that we would just talk casually it wasn't anything super deep but you know i was like she's gonna get through this because i got through it we basically had the same mutation just a little different and she was taking the same meds that i was but i was in new york once and i was like hey i know it's your birthday and i got you a birthday present this is around may i think i think it was around may i'll come see you i'll give you this present don't have to stay very long because i was still pretty aware of those boundaries when you're sick and you just don't want anyone to come and see you you just want to be left alone so i was trying to be very like it's okay type of thing i don't want me to be a burden on you she said actually my family's doing this thing it turns out it was like a big surprise party so i'm glad she didn't we didn't see each other and i'm glad she got to spend time with her family and friends on my way back i was like you know what i haven't heard from amanda in a while i wonder what she's up to she hadn't posted in a long time i didn't know why she was tagged in something from her mom and it was like my daughter didn't die of leukemia even though her second her second bone marrow transplant went great um her body was accepting it um she was about to leave the hospital the next day and she had a seizure that seizure ended up killing her and it was it was tough it hit me so hard on the way home she was my age she was the same age as the nurses at that age 20 something that's actually in this in-between stage where you don't have child cancer and you don't have adult cancer either so you're sort of in this in between where you think you can live because your body is young and it can withstand this stuff but her body like it just her body went through so much she went through before you have bone marrow transplants you have to have chemo all over again that first round of chemo where it takes out your entire immune system so she basically had to go through that first round of super intense chemo three times she also had to get her body to accept somebody else's bone marrow two times and all of that i think it just took a toll i felt like she was gonna make it so much that when she didn't it was such a huge shock that i don't know i i don't know it was just really bad and her family was so sweet her family was incredible and i'm still friends with him on facebook and i see their posts and everything and they they celebrate her birthday any time her sisters post about her nieces they're like i wish i wish amanda was here to see it i wish she was here to see these things i mean i know amanda has passed away but but missing all that i don't even think she she even got to think that she was going to miss that i don't think she got the chance to to really imagine that death was going to happen and that she could she before that she had to get as much life in as possible i don't think she had that realization which is awful sometimes i think i wish people knew when they were gonna die and then sometimes i wish they didn't i don't know if you could tell everyone in the world one thing what would it be oh oh this is the question oh um if there is one thing i feel like i've already said this a few times but if there's one thing that i could tell anyone in the world i would tell them fight for yourself because you are worth fighting for if you feel something and you know it is your truth express that and don't quit until you get what you want unless it's like something really weird and terrible but if it's something that you really need and is very vital to you don't be afraid to fight for it fight for what you want thank you ronald mcdonald [Music] you

Channel: Syrmor

Views: 207,990

Keywords: vr, syrmor, vrchat, virtual reality, vrchat stories, people in vrchat, guy in vrchat, girl in vrchat, anime, avatar, vr funny moments

Id: 4TFJB7hHZuk

Length: 21min 49sec (1309 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/firegaming364]

thanks dawa