Sydni Kasem
Stories (2/0)
Coping With Cancer
September 28th, 2017. It's Thursday. I'm in my first week at my new job and I am loving it. My mom has been back and forth from the hospital since August 7th, 2017. She found a lump. It's an abscess. For over a month she went everywhere with a towel in her bra as the abscess was drained. She had seven biopsies. One came back positive, breast cancer. That is all she is told on 9/28/17. My mother has told me not to call her on my lunch break but she will talk to me when I get home. I knew. It must be bad news. I don't remember the rest of my day at work. I only remember going home, up to my mother's bedroom, looking at her and breaking. She didn't even need to say the word and I knew. We didn't know the full diagnosis. Was it terminal? What treatment would my mother have? So many questions but we had to wait for answers. I cried the entire next day at work. I opted to go work, I needed a distraction. I spoke with my new boss, she couldn't have been more understanding and sympathetic. She asked if I was positive on staying in work that day. I was also told any time off I needed for my mother's treatment, etc., I could take. I take every Wednesday off as this has become my mother's chemotherapy day.
By Sydni Kasem6 years ago in Longevity
A One Parent Child
They say there are two sides to every story but this is from a child’s view, a third side to this story. I have never grown up with any sort of male influence in my life. It’s always been me, my mom, and my little brother. I don’t know who my father is. I have nothing. Not for want of trying, but because no one is willing to listen to the cries of a broken heart. A void sits in my heart and has done for 27 years. I never really thought about having two parents when I was very small but then I listened to the other children in my classes and that’s when it hit me, I only have one parent. The other children would get excited to go on picnics or go to the beach with their mommies and daddies. I got excited if my mother would watch Saturday morning cartoons with my brother and I. I began to ask questions but my mother always shut me down, as a child I should be seen and not heard. When I was just 10 years old my mother admitted that my brother and I do not share a father, making us step brother/sister. Naturally I began telling people that we were not real siblings, to which I was repeatedly told off for. The world was already confusing me. The other children in my classes couldn’t understand why every Father’s Day I drew my mother a card. I didn’t want to be left out of all the fun, doing arts and crafts. As I progressed into high school my interest in my father dwindled as my studies and home life took up all of my time. I began asking questions again at the age of 14. This is when I was assigned a counsel lot in school and diagnosed with reactive depression and social anxiety. By 16 I was diagnosed with chronic depression and severe anxiety. My days were spent in darkness. I was bullied in school due to an undiagnosable skin condition I have on my face. Home life was no picnic either, the neighbors making comments about the amount of chores I was forced to do compared to my little brother. He is only two years younger than me but has always been the golden child, being a boy. Once I turned 16 I decided I wanted information about my father and I knew, by law, I am entitled to know at least his name. However, my mother thought differently and only told me he gave me up before I was born. The rest of my family think that my mom has no idea who my father is, there is also the illusion that my brother's father is also mine. My brother and I had a paternal DNA test done and proved we are not paternally related, only maternally. All I have ever asked is for his name since I was very small. Now, at the age of 27, it is no longer my priority to find him. If he knew how to find me and found me then I would give him that chance.
By Sydni Kasem6 years ago in Families