A True Story of Courage
It was an icy day in December. I awoke to the pre-recorded message that stated school was cancelled. Yes!! This is going to be an awesome day! Or so I thought. While eating breakfast, I found out my Dad was having some numbness in his face and had to go to the emergency room. It wasn’t until late that night that I found out my Dad needed to have brain surgery. The tests showed a bleed in his brain and the doctors didn’t know why. My dad was totally healthy. He rarely ever got sick. What was going on? I couldn’t make sense of it. Surgery was scheduled in three days.
I went to visit my Dad in the hospital with my brother and sisters every day. We laughed and joked around like always. My Dad seemed totally fine. He told me not to worry. He also told me that his head needed to be shaved. I was a little freaked out about this. I’m not the type of person that likes change. My Dad didn’t want us kids to get upset so he decided to make a “party” out of it. Surprisingly, my Dad handed over the razor and let us kids help shave his head. We joked around the whole time. When it was all done, my Dad definitely looked different. We told him he looked tougher and should join a motorcycle gang. I gave my Dad a hug before I left and added “I will see you tomorrow after surgery.”
My Mom stayed with my Dad, and my oldest sister drove us kids home. It seemed like a very long ride home. I thought about my Dad the whole time. I worried about the surgery. I wondered if my Dad was going to be okay. I thought my Dad was being pretty brave about the whole thing. I wished there was something I could do to help him. But I was in the fifth grade, what could I do? My brother and I started talking about my Dad shaving his head when the idea hit us. What if we shaved our heads too to show him our love and support. “That’s crazy!” I announced. I mean I like my hair. My sister heard us talking and replied, “Yes! You should totally do it.” When we got home she then shaved both me and my brother’s heads! Yikes!
The next day my Dad went to surgery and my brother and I went to school. Unfortunately, none of us had a very good day. Our classmates just didn’t understand. I felt really proud of my decision to support my Dad, but my classmates made fun of me. I got a lot of really awkward stares. Nobody seemed to understand. It was worse for my brother in junior high. Junior high kids really didn’t get it.
After my Dad left the ICU I was able to visit him. I’ll never forget the smile across his face when he saw my brother and I walk into his room. He couldn’t believe it. He told me, “That is the coolest thing you have ever done for me!” And then he gave me a bear hug. This was just the beginning of a series of life lessons my Dad’s brain cancer was going to teach me. Supporting the people you love is the coolest thing you could do. It didn’t matter that a lot of my friends made fun of me and thought it was stupid. Sometimes you just have to take a stand in what and who you believe in no matter the cost. I took a stand against cancer. Cancer may have taken my dad’s hair, but it didn’t touch his sense of humor or the way he loved me. Shaving my head didn’t make sense to my friends, but it made more sense to my Dad than anything else I could have done.
-Pio
