When we left Soulfest on that Friday morning, I still didn’t think my life would change forever. I was a 17 year old immature kid who thought he was invincible. I left the festival that morning like it wasn’t even out of the ordinary. Just a happy go lucky drive down to Mass General Hospital.
In the car with me was my mother and my friend Jarrod. The woman who noticed I had a tumor in my armpit met us down there for this day. Most of the testing and meeting are all a blur at this point, however, this was definitely the day I learned I can’t stand sitting in a MRI machine for two hours. It dragged on and it was hell. How are you going to tell an active 17 year old who plays sports that he has to lay completely still for two hours?
I remember meeting Dr. David Ebb and Nurse Practitioner Patricia Kent for the first time. At some point here Patricia is going to get an entire blog post but for now, just know that she was incredible. I couldn’t stand her then but as an adult looking back, I absolutely love and adore her.
I went through all the testing that I previously mentioned and then we went and sat in a room. This room was in the Yawkee building, on the 8th floor, room 6. In this room is where it was confirmed to be cancer by Dr. Ebb. He looked me dead in the eyes when he told me and I didn’t flinch.
I don’t think I really registered what he said if I’m being honest. I can’t sit here and tell you I even know what was going through my head. Maybe it was disbelief or maybe I thought it was a joke and there may have been some kind of mistake. I have to hand it to Dr. Ebb, the man is really good with people, he dropped the bomb and then went silent for a couple minutes while the four people in the room registered what he said.
If I was alone in that room then I doubt I would have ever reacted. At some point in this dead time I looked around the room. My mother had tears streaming down her face and that’s when it finally hit me. I was probably going to die. Once the reality set in and I understood what was happening in that room, I had almost zero doubt in my mind that I was going to die. I mean shit, my dad died when I was six from lung cancer, why would I survive when he couldn’t?
If you have any questions about my story or me at any point feel free to e-mail me at Jjollymore@Jollycations.org. I will respond to questions in blog post form.
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