A few years ago, if I told you I was dying, you wouldn’t have believed me. Senior year and the star of the girls soccer team, I was virtually unstoppable. Like most eighteen year olds, I never gave much thought to death, the only worry in my mind was maintaining my grades for my university soccer scholarship. On November thirteenth, I checked into the hospital. With the championship game coming up I needed to be at my best, but despite my intense workout schedule I felt weaker and weaker by the day. Must be the flu, I thought. Only, it wasn’t the flu, and in one minute, one blink, one breath, my life changed forever. I had cancer.

    Everyday that I spent trapped inside the sterile prison felt like a nightmare. This wasn’t the life I was supposed to be living. I was supposed to be going to Stamford to play soccer, I was supposed to playing in the championship game and going to the mall with my friends, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was hooked up to a plethora of machines and tubes surrounded by “get well” cards and balloons from people I barely knew. I no longer recognized the face that stared back at me through the mirror. Her thin brown hair and sunken eyes didn’t resemble me in the slightest.  My friends didn’t come by often, they told me hospitals freaked them out, or that they preferred to text, or they were just too busy. They acted as if coming in close proximity to someone dying was contagious, like if they even stepped foot in a hospital they would automatically contract some life threatening disease. Little by little, every friend I thought I had disappeared. I became  merely a legend at school. At first, rumors circulated my name like I was an A-list celebrity. Some people said I was dead, some thought I faked the whole thing, but rumors die out and suddenly I, Lydia Mosley was completely forgotten.

    My optimism grew weak with my body after every experimental treatment the doctors said would save me, I got used to the disappointment I faced after every ct scan where I would be faced with some rather nervous doctors telling me my tumor had grown instead of shrunk. On June twenty third, just shortly after my twentieth birthday, Doctor Richard Neely walked into my room. I could sense something wrong immediately. He lacked his signature positive energy that made me feel better on even my worst days. He stared at the ground as he walked towards my bed. I talked first. “Doctor Neely” I said. “Is something wrong?” my voice shook with each word, although I tried to sound strong. He could not look me in the eyes. “Ms. Mosley, your condition has been declared terminal. We estimate six months”  He sounded like a stranger.  This was not the optimistic doctor I had met on the very first day I walked into this place. He walked out without saying another word to me. The next few days were a blur, I don’t remember much clearly. After word spread to the rest of my family that I was officially dying, second cousins and great aunts from all over the country flocked to Oxdale County Hospital where they told me how bad they felt for me, I didn’t want their sympathy. Of course, my parents couldn’t scold me for how rude I was being to our relatives, dodging their sympathy and replying to their “words of wisdom” with snarky remarks. But how could they? I was dying afterall.

    One foggy morning, a middle aged blonde woman walked into my room, room fifteen, where I had spent every day of my life for two years. Her cheerful attitude disgusted me, didn’t she know I was dying?  She introduced herself as Kathy and for some reason or another she had dedicated her life to providing terminally ill children with some sort of final wish thing. I noticed how she danced around the word “dying” like most people did. It was like no one thought I actually knew what was happening to myself. Anyway, she brought my mother into the room and gave both of us a pamphlet of previous wishes for inspiration. Kathy told us she’d be back to “good old room fifteen” on Tuesday. I skimmed through the pamphlet, It showed various sick children smiling at disney, with a new puppy, or  meeting with celebrities. I didn’t want one of those cliche wishes, I thought of what I longed for the most. The outside world.

    I thought at twenty years old, I might just be a little old for this whole wish thing, after all since no further treatment could do me any help I was going to be sent home along with an abundance of pills and machines that would control me. Even though I didn’t get why I still had to take medication or spend my days hooked up to an IV, I was still pretty excited about getting to go home, even if that meant laying in my bed and watching “Moonrise Kingdom” on repeat everyday for the rest of my life. Anyway, my biggest wish had always been going home and since that was being fulfilled I was left wishless.

    Kathy returned to room fifteen on my final day at the hospital. With a large out of place grin, she asked, “Lydia! What did you pick out for your wish?”. I rolled my eyes, although I’m not exactly sure why,  maybe it was because she treated me like a wounded puppy but I don’t know. “Kathy” I said. “My wish is not something you could fulfill. I have spent years of my life unhappily sitting in a hospital bed, I have watched friends disappear, I have watched kids come into this place and never leave. I have looked death in the eyes and pushed on. My final wish is to continue my fight, my final wish is not to have an expiration date on my life.” Kathy’s smile faded in an almost comical way and somehow I got satisfaction from that. I watched on, struggling to hold in my laughter as she tried to tell me that I couldn’t wish for a longer life. It’s true, of course I didn’t want to die, but it’s also true that I made that whole speech to see Kathy freak out a little. She left, without saying much except for that she could give me some more time to think of a wish. I declined.
    I was about to leave the hospital, bags packed and ready to feel the fresh air in my lungs, ready to breathe without being suffocated by the scent of antiseptic. As I stepped out of  the hospital, my life flashed before my eyes, but not in a dying way. I remembered crying as I missed the championship game, but rejoicing when my team won, a little slice of happiness in this horrible place. I remembered meeting Doctor Neely for the first time, the only doctor that didn’t act as if you were a time bomb about to explode, the only person who could turn my otherwise negative attitude positive.  I remembered being told I had six months to live and the glimmer of hope my parents always had. Every moment, every let down, every snarky remark, experimental treatments and pill had molded me into the person I am today, a person I wouldn’t change for a thing. If I could have a second chance at life, I wouldn’t exactly choose to have cancer, I wouldn’t choose to have my life cut short during supposedly the best years of my life but then again I wouldn’t change who I became because of it. For the first time in two and a half years I was able to come to terms with my diagnosis not as a death sentence, but as a reminder to live every moment, every second of my life like it’s my last.