Growing up, family has always been a big part of my life. Rather than constantly hanging out with friends on weekends, my siblings and I often chose to visit our cousins and stay at our grandparent’s house. They lived the country on some land, so we spent most of our time outside playing in the yard, building tree forts with my grandpa, and playing cards with my grandma. When I was about 8, my grandpa was diagnosed with stage 4 Prostate cancer. At that age, I really didn’t understand what those 4 words meant or even the severity of them. I just understood that he had cancer that started in one spot and it was spreading to the rest of his body. The damage it does and the effects it has on a person really didn’t hit me until I got older. Once my family got the news of this, there wasn’t as much going over to play with grandpa because he wasn’t able to run around anymore or help build the tree fort that we had been working on. In fact, the more people that were over there, sometimes the worse he would get. Which made it very difficult to see as well as to comprehend. 

For a long time, he really didn’t believe that modern medicine and chemotherapy could help so he didn’t do much about his illness. Once it got really bad, the Cancer Center of America in Chicago changed all of our lives. At stage 4 in any type of cancer, it is really difficult for someone to get better and we all started to understand that the more my grandpa got sick. But once he started to get chemotherapy at the CCA, his entire viewpoint on the sickness changed. He was okay with trying different treatments and trying whatever it was he could for the sake of my grandma and his children. The cancer center really made his weekly trips a lot more enjoyable for him as well. They tried to understand what he was going through and tried to accommodate him in every way possible. They would pick him up from the train station in a limo and drop him off to his appointments and therapy and truly made sure that his experience there was as best as they could make it, considering the circumstances. Even on the days where he had a bad attitude or was frustrated because he couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a cure and why it was happening to him, they were all so very nice and understood how emotional and draining the process was. 

 Fortunately, the treatment they put him on, we were able to create many more memories for 5 years, which to us, was a miracle. He even made it to see him and his wife’s 50^thwedding anniversary and it was one of the most beautiful things ever. Sadly, a few days after that he passed away. But if it wasn’t for the amazing experience and help of wonderful doctors, nurses, therapists, etc., we wouldn’t have been able to share the few more years that we were able to with him. I honestly don’t think there really was one negative aspect about the experience with American biomedicine. All the staff and physicians explained everything and were so wonderful and caring and they truly wanted to figure out what was going on and to try to get rid of it. It was definitely a very difficult time for me and my family, but since then, it has truly made me realize how important the health field is and now I am certain of the career I am going for.