The Event Of The Year (essay)

September 2006. it was a usual weekday with a usual bus journey to school, with a boring school day, with a coke after school in the Green Pub and with a journey back home. Then unusual silence at home. I was about to ask my mother if I were at a wrong place when she – with tears in her eyes – told me: „Ákos has cancer.”

It was shocking. How can that be that my 2 year-old nephew has cancer? It was a silly question and there was no answer for it just the basic facts: he had a tumor in his scrotum, which needed to be removed. Ákos had two operations and during the second one doctors had to remove the whole scrotum in which the tumour was.

But his and the whole family’s sufferings didn’t end here. One month later medical examinations showed that Ákos had a special kind of cancer that attacks muscular cells. More questions arose and no answers for them again just cruel facts: he can never be cured but he can live without symptoms.

Now Ákos is over the strongest chemotherapy, his nutrition became healthier and he has to go to regular examinations to check if there are any problems with his blood. In fact, he is like any other 3 year-old child. We have to look after him specially because his immune system is still weak. He will be able to live a life of full value, however, he will always be in danger.

Cancer changed Ákos’s life and it has an effect on my family, and me, too. Fear somehow became a part of our life and it will never disappear. I would like to add that I am very proud of Ákos because he put up with treatments well and he was brave all the time. And I will henceforth help him to face with this illness in any event.