My mother used to tell me a story every night about a girl who seemed to live a perfect life in a small village in Mexico, but I haven’t heard this story in a while.  About ten years back she was diagnosed with stage 3 Lymphoma non-Hodgkin. This is cancer of the lymph tissue. Lymph tissue is found in the lymph nodes, spleen, and other organs of the immune system. She was substantially dying before her entire family and the worst part was she had two children, my sister of nine months and me of five years. The thought of knowing someone as my first best friend for the first five years of my life and then have them taken away, shattered every bit of my spirit. Even worse, my sister. She hadn’t formed a coherent thought about her mother yet, she didn’t know the woman who had given birth to her, the woman who most likely had developed this monster while she bared her being within her.

We had family all the way from Indiana to California and this had been the only time we were truly united as one. It was truly repulsing to my dad that it had to take this kind of catastrophe for my distant uncles to drag their hypocritical butts to Texas for the first time in almost a decade.

About a month after her diagnose she underwent her first chemotherapy which almost killed her. She was in a ten day coma and after she woke up from what I told was a “deep sleep”, she recognized no one. My dad was the bearded man who always stood in the corner of the room. My aunt Elvira, her little sister, suddenly turned into and African American nurse that would smoke in the room and steal the little air she could breathe. My uncle, her older brother, had suddenly gotten a PhD and was a doctor at the hospital. Every memory she ever had, had been eradicated from her memory. Miraculously, she remembered her two little angels who stayed by her side the entire time telling her to keep going and to get healthy because they needed herto raise them and guide them in the right direction.

Time flew by, every second was crucial to the Oncologists. My dad was told multiple times before every chemotherapy session,” Mr. Resendiz, you have to understand that the consequences may be worse than the first chemo, your wife may not make it through” his response was always a firm “I will do whatever it takes, please try to save my wife”. I will never stop being grateful for my dad’s gutsy decision to never give up on his soulmate. He always said, “I would much rather she dies trying to live rather than she dies without giving life the chance it deserves”.

Months passed by and my mother’s health was getting better but at the same time worse. The cancer was slowly but surely disappearing due to the efforts of many doctors who never gave up hope. Her defenses were weakening by the second. She went into the hospital weighing 140 lbs. and eight months after her ingression weighed 80 lbs.

She was given a day every three months where she could go home to spend some time away from the hospital but would end up going back within hours because of complications. During this time, she missed my first day of kindergarten, my sixth birthday and my sister’s first word.

A year after she was diagnosed, her battle ended. Many might assume she passed away but these people don’t know the kind of courage it takes to beat a monster that tried taking everything that made you smile. My mother was signed out of John Peter Smith Hospital on August of 2006, a month before I tuned 7. She had to learn how to walk again because her body mass of 60 lbs. mad it impossible for her to stand. That sparked no challenge for my mother as a month later she had gained 30 lbs. and was standing on her own.

It is now nine years since she proudly walked out of that hospital. She lost all of her vision in her right eye and 95% in her left eye due to chemotherapy radiation. She doesn’t let that stop her from bettering herself as she became a U.S citizen 5 years ago. Maura Resendiz is the most determined woman I know. I couldn’t be more proud that now that I’m 15 years of age I can still listen to the story about the girl who seemed to live a perfect life in a small village in Mexico and enjoy it as much as I did nine years ago.