Someone, tell me what the face of cancer looks like. Should my daughter "look" like she is dying? Should be be bald? Should she look like she is starving?


You would not believe the looks we get when people hear that Amanda has cancer. Some just don't believe it. (I had someone accuse us of being fake and making this all up to get money or sympathy.) For the most part, Amanda looks perfectly healthy. She walks and talks, eats and laughs. I've begun to think of it as a silent disease. At this point in her treatment she does not "look" like a cancer patient. I have to admit, while I ask these questions of the rest of you, I see a bald lady and might assume that she is battling cancer. Bald, oxygen, tiny...make you think of a "cancer" patient?


This silent disease isn't all that you think it is. There are cancer patients walking amongst us everywhere and we don't even know it, unless of course they visually present with, (refer to the previous descriptions of "cancer" patient). My daughter is living with cancer, a silent disease and she is perfectly normal, on the outside. I don't even want to believe it myself sometimes. I keep thinking maybe we should get a second opinion, maybe another doctor will tell us that she is fine. Hey, I'm holding on to any sort of hope and yes, I'm grasping at any straw I can in hopes that she will WIN this fight!


And then...
     there is the "I better get my will done." "My hair keeps falling out." Last night there was a bit of time that she fought through pain in her chest. She began to drink a cold glass of milk and was fine at the first few sips but then she couldn't take any more. She has discovered, as she began to gag at the dinner table, that she cannot stomach the texture of sausage links any more. The small changes are starting to take its toll on her.


So, this is what cancer looks like...?


I leave you with this update...Amanda saw her doctor the other day. She point blank asked him how much "time" she was looking at because she was getting sick of people asking her. One to two years, at best.


GO. FIGHT. WIN, Baby girl!!