A Malignant Story.

Lara never had any sort of privileged living, her family's life was what you would most likely term 'average'. Proper schooling, three square meals, adequate clothing and just the right amount of prayers. Her Mother believed vehemently in this, she was the kind to fast three days straight with an aftermath brief period of unsolicited sickness. Severally she had without another second of thought given more than 80% her salary to the Pastor "Bless the man of Jehovah and lack nothing she would say". Imagine the level of shock Lara received when she found out her mother would die a slow painful death, in Lara's mind this couldn't happen and it wouldn't matter if Arch Angel Michael came down himself to inform her, Lara wouldn't simply believe him.
        "Wake up Lara!" The words, accompanied by a sharp jab to my ribs, had me awake, not alert but awake.
        "She's seizing again", the nurse's frantic voice said beside me. I sprang out of the chair and became fully alert as I hurried over to Mama's beside, assisting the nurse to hold her so she wouldn't fall of the bed, until the episode was over.
        "I know you haven't been sleeping well but your job is to watch her", she said to me in a low almost sympathetic tone.
         A few hours later I awoke to the extraordinary sound that broke into my consciousness, somewhat designed to raise the dead, a cross between a scream and a deep groan. Panic struck me as I once again raced to her bedside. Mama's complexion once a bright, gleaming yellow was now a shade of white the colour of snow. It's amazing the colossal amount of pain a human can endure. I couldn't think of anything else, so I said "Sorry Mama".
       "I want to die o, let me go, please!" and a low groan was her reply. Her eyes that usually glistened with hope, were filled with dark emotions, sunken deep into their sockets, I shuddered as I felt a wave of death pass through me.
      "Please oh!" she pleaded, as she groaned with pain, her once energetic, able body reduced to a thin pile of sore bones, she ached with every touch, her breathing low and uneven. With every glance I took at her I couldn't help but evoke memories of her previous vivacious self. "Are you scared?" she murmured, "NO!" I lied. I don't think she believed me anymore than I believed my own self. I hadn't had anything to eat for a while, I was dizzy and my vision blurred but......
      I gave Mama some water to drink, with each gulp she yelped with pain, from the white over-grown sore patches in her mouth and throat. How quickly this disease had ravaged such a beautiful woman, and in it's course destroyed our family.
     On the days when Sam came, she could barely recognize him, the youngest of five children, and a measly age four, without a mother's love he had begun to seek affection elsewhere.
     My life changed only a few months ago, we were a happy family, a roof over our heads and a place to sleep, within days we had been reduced to taking refuge in old cars; every last penny funnelled into this ferocious disease. I had come close to being raped severally, we had starved on numerous occasions and gone house to house begging on others, gathering all we could for Mama's health. God had forsaken us; shut his ears to our cries as we watched the only parent in our life, slowly and excruciatingly decompose; wither away so lengthily that I sometimes secretly wished she would just die. At sixteen I knew nothing about the perils of life, how quickly everyone had either thrown us out or left us on the streets. I had hurled her frail body in the company of my siblings to the hospital times without number,, thinking her already dead.
     Have you ever thought about Cancer? Mammograms and Regular OBGYN check ups? Because Lara never thought about CANCER mainly because she never thought she'd know anyone with CANCER or she, herself developing the disease. It couldn't hurt her, any of my friends or my family members.
                            THE WORLD NEEDS MORE CANCER AWARENESS