Quote

When I had bone cancer, I was just 11 years old. I think my parents suffered a lot because they worried about my health, my life, so much. For me, it was quite bad feeling during the treatment. But I quite enjoyed staying in the hospital because so many kids played with me.

When I was a child, doctors sent my grandmother home in a wheelchair to die. Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she already had so much scar tissue from bypass operations that the surgeons had essentially run out of plumbing. There was nothing more to do, they said; her life was over at 65.

My two grandmothers both died of cancer, so I understand how painful and difficult this disease is on the entire family. My first grandmother passed away from bone cancer when I was about 10. It was really horrible. I remember the whole process like it was yesterday.

In 2001, my father finally succumbed to the bone cancer that had tortured him for seven years. His last weeks were a terrible, black icing on the cake, the agony, the slow twisting, thinning and snapping of his skeleton. Everything fell apart.

I was very blessed with a good body. Never got hurt. Never was in the hospital. The only time I was in the hospital was when I would get exhausted a little bit, and go in for a check-up or something.

When I was 11, I spent eight months in the hospital with rheumatic fever and almost died.

When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.

Both my parents were doctors, and my mother had her surgery in the house. There were six children.

I had a mild case of polio - not enough to put me in an iron lung, but enough to keep me bedridden for weeks. As I came out of it, my mom wanted to do something for me. She realized that, growing up in the city, I'd missed out on a lot of nature.