I am Hazel

My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster and I have cancer.  But cancer doesn’t define me.

I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when I was 13 years old. I am 16 now and the cancer has created mets, an impressive and long-settled satellite colony, in my lungs. I have been taking an experimental drug called Phalanxifor which has will help me live longer.

My lungs suck at being lungs. So I have to use an oxygen tank that I roll around on a little steel cart attached to a cannula, a transparent tube that splits beneath my neck, wraps behind my ears and then comes back together at my nose to help me breath.  I've named my oxygen tank Phillip.  I need Phillip because my lungs suck at being lungs.   

I have short, dark hair, green eyes, and chipmunk cheeks from the steroids.  So read my blog if you want, if you don’t want to then don’t. It’s your life after all.

Miserable in Support Group

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer.  But in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer.  Depression is a side effect of dying.  

I’ll never be a typical teenager but I don’t care. My mom thinks I’m depressed.  She thought it was serious enough to require treatment so she took me to my regular doctor, Dr. Jim.  He agreed that I was virtually swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression and that my meds should be adjusted and I should attend a weekly support group.  

Support group is about as boring as it sounds.  Every Wednesday we meet in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross, where the two boards would have met, and where the literal heart of Jesus would have been.  We all sit around telling everyone else our name, age, diagnosis and how we’re doing today.  Then we talked about fighting and battling, and scanning and shrinking. Patrick, the support group leader would tell us his cancer survival story every meeting. 

This one kid, Isaac was the only reason that support group was bearable, even though we would basically only communicate through a series of sighs, eye rolls, and glances. Then finally the meeting ends with a prayer and a seemingly endless list of kids who couldn't attend support group anymore due to the fact that they were dead.

 I’m so sick of it, I've been trying my best to get out of going, but in the end I just go to make my parents happy.

Augustus

Support group didn't suck today! Isaac brought his friend to the meeting.  His name is Augustus Waters and he was totally staring at me!  He was kinda hot! 

When Patrick asked him to introduce him self he said, " My name is Augustus Waters, I'm seventeen.  I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half a go, but I'm just here today at Isaac's request." Then Patrick asked him what he feared.  He said he feared oblivion. 

While I’m normally shy and the not the commenting type, I felt I had to say something. 

 I told him, there will come a time when all of us are dead.  All of us.  There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything.  There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you.  Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever.  There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after.  An if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.  God knows that what everyone else does.  He seemed really impressed by my little speech of encouragement. 

He and Isaac approached me after support group and then Augustus Waters told me I was beautiful and that I looked like this actress from V for Vendetta and then he invited me over to his house to watch the movie. 

I Love to Read

I don’t get out much.  But I love to read. My favorite book, by a long stretch is An Imperial Affliction  by Peter Van Houten.  I’ve read it over and over. 

It's about this girl named Anna who lives in California and has a rare blood cancer, but the book is not all about cancer.  It’s really about her life while she’s going through cancer.  Anna creates this charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.  It’s just funny and respectful and reflects the reality of the cancer experience in a way I have rarely encountered.  

But then the book just ends in the middle of a sentence!  And I have some questions!  I’ve been trying to contact the author because I want to know what happens after the book ends. Was the Dutch Tulip Man a con man?  What happened to Anna’s mother? What happened to the hamster?

My 33rd Half Birthday!

My mom’s is really super into celebration maximization. Like “It’s Arbor Day!  Let’s hug trees and eat cake!”  

Today she reminded me that it’s my thirty-third half birthday.  So I invited Kaitlyn to go to Castleton Square Mall with me after school.  Kaitlyn and I have been friends for a long time.  She acts like a sophisticated twenty-five year old British socialite stuck inside a sixteen year old body.  And when Kaitlyn shops it’s with an intensity and focus one usually associates with playing professional chess.  

Anyway I bought a pair of flip-flops and Kaitlyn got three pairs of closed toe shoes, because she hates the way her second toe is longer than rest. Then I told her I had to go and I found a quite place to settle down and read the sequel to The Price of Dawn. While I am reading a little girl came up and asked what my cannula and oxygen tank were.  I explained how it gives me extra oxygen and I let her try it.  I really liked that little girl.