Jaime Narciso

Jaime Narciso is a brain tumor survivor.

I was diagnosed in 2004. My treatment began with a surgery on August 12, 2004. After the surgery, I woke up and I didn’t know what had happened to me. I don’t think that I was here after that. Some days later, I began to recuperate little by little. After all that, I went to my house but I didn’t last long. I returned the following week. I saw my doctor and he told me about the treatment, what it would consist of and that it would be four months of chemotherapy and 15 days of radiation. One week later, I began the chemotherapy treatment. During this time I felt very bad. After the treatment I often vomited for a number of days. After that came the radiation. The radiation was also terrible. I had lots of effects after that. In December I finished the treatment, but I don’t consider that I finished everything because after that I entered into a depression. The depression was terrible for me because it made me feel really bad. I had really bad emotions in that time. I was very sad, depressed and alone.

During my depression I felt really sad. The principal emotion that I felt after the treatment was that I felt very sad. I felt very alone and I thought that I was the only one who had gone through that. I didn’t realize what there was out there. I didn’t know until I began to see a psychologist in the hospital and the psychologist told me about Teen Impact. He took me, and I met everyone that does this group Teen Impact. I went to a group and they told me that there was going to be a retreat. I decided to go on the retreat and in that retreat I met four girls. We became good friends and we began to talk. We began to help one another. A little girl was very depressed, too. She had tried to commit suicide. I said to her, ”Why were you doing that, that’s not right, you have to appreciate life.” It wasn’t until that moment that I realized, “Oh! I have to appreciate life.” I had never realized that, until that moment, when I told her that, and then she paid attention to me. There were other girls with the same problem - depression. We helped each other and we kept coming to the group. We kept coming and coming and we haven’t stopped coming. Some time ago one of my friends died and this surprised me a lot. I remember the day that they told me. I was eating when they called. In that moment I felt really bad. I felt a pain in my chest that I’d never felt before and I remember that I sat down. I started to think and it was a tremendous feeling because one of my best friends had died. That was something really painful. It was something that I never thought was going to happen, but it happened. You have to keep living because life doesn’t stop for a situation. You have to keep living.

One of the programs that I used a lot in the hospital was Teen Impact. Teen Impact is a group where adolescents get together to talk about our problems. This group gets together every second and fourth Monday of each month. In this group we talk about our problems. I began to meet people and build relationships. As time kept passing, my depression started going away a lot. That was one of the things that has helped me a lot during my time. Teen Impact is my family. We consider ourselves family in the group because we’ve all had cancer. We’ve all suffered and consider ourselves a family.

I’ve had some secondary effects since my treatment. My weakness is on the right side - my hand. I can’t write with my hand. It gets tired very quickly. I’ve found other ways to excel. In school, for example, I use my computer. I take my computer and I start to do my work on the computer. That’s the way that I can help myself. My foot also is very weak. But like I have told a lot of people, you survived, you have to be happy with that and everything else will come. You have to keep living. You have to keep living and you have to keep fighting.

I sometimes think that my cancer could come back. The fear has been going away, but in the beginning when I had come out of the treatment, I would get panicked that the cancer was going to come back. It was a fear that was terrible. I told my teachers and they tried to help me. Every time I went back to the hospital it was a fear. It was a terror to be in the hospital, just waiting for the doctor to arrive and for him to tell me, “We have to talk with your parents, it’s come back,” or the other was, “You’re okay, it hasn’t come back.” Each time that we came terrified me. As time has passed I’m not afraid anymore. I just came in December and I wasn’t afraid. I was calm, no fear, relaxed. I was very relaxed. My doctor came, and he told me, “You’re all good.” The fear is going away now. I’m not very afraid anymore.

During the time that I would panic what I used to relax myself was to talk with my teachers because they helped me a lot. They gave me lots of advice. The other thing I did was to talk to anybody I knew, talk to them about my feelings, and they helped me a lot. The third option that I had was to come to Teen Impact. I came here and I spoke to them. Beyond that I read some books. All that helped me a lot to relax more each time that I came to see the doctor.

The word hope is a little strange in our situation. But hope means that it is not going to come back - the tumor won’t come back; it simply won’t come back. That is what I think all the time, and it’s what I think a lot of other patients must also think.

During the time that I was going through treatment, I never had problems communicating with my doctors, especially one doctor. He is also a survivor of cancer, so he knows what I was going through during that time. Every time that he was going to do something, for example a “spinal tap,” many people were telling me it wasn’t going to hurt and he told me, “It’s going to hurt you, but you have to endure, that’s how this works, you have to be strong.” I never had problems with the doctors. They always told me what I needed to know. I think that I never had a situation where they didn’t tell me what was going to happen to me. All the time they told me everything that was going to happen to me. They told me that my hair was going to fall out. They told me that I was going to need blood transfusions. They told me that maybe I was going to vomit. They told me everything that was going to happen to me. I think I never had problems with my doctors.

It was very important that they told me everything that was going to happen because if not, I would have reacted very frightened. I would have said, “Why is this happening to me? Why am I vomiting? Why am I feeling fear?” I think that is what would have happened if the doctors hadn’t told me anything.

I am grateful that I had my doctor, my oncologist, because he had already been through that, he already knew how much you suffer when you are diagnosed with cancer. He knows all the suffering, so for that I’m grateful that I had him.

I was born in Mexico, so they helped me with a program called CCS. They helped me a lot with the medical. Those two programs helped me a lot. They paid for all my treatment. I’m very grateful as well for that, because I’m sure that if I had been in Mexico I might not be here right now. I wouldn’t be alive. I wouldn’t be here in this world.

The government benefit programs that I received were the CCS. The CCS was a program that helped me a lot. They paid for my treatment. If I was in Mexico they would not have helped me with everything that they gave me here - I’m sure of that. And beyond that, I think I wouldn’t be here.

In Mexico there aren’t the same resources as here. In Mexico there are fewer resources. I think that if I had been diagnosed there, I wouldn’t be alive. In Mexico my parents would have had to pay a lot of money and that quantity would have been immense. My parents wouldn’t have had the money to pay for that.

In Mexico the subject of cancer is the same as here. There aren’t a lot of organizations that help to provide treatment. Mexico still doesn’t have a lot of that and you have to go to other states, and basically live there. In Mexico I lived in the state called Puebla, but we came here in 1995. From that time I’ve been living here. It was a bit difficult to come to a country where I didn’t know how to speak English. But, as you can see now, I know how to speak English. I can communicate with other people. I’m very happy about that and I’m happy because the cancer has awakened many things in me. It’s awakened things that would not have been awakened if I hadn’t been through this.

LIVESTRONG means hope. I think because it’s a Foundation that whatever circumstance we’re going through, they can help you. They give you information and they can help you. LIVESTRONG is an immense word. It’s like hope, and hope is an immense word that can’t be described at the maximum.

The advice that I give to other cancer survivors is first to have hope, because hope is what you have to have when you are diagnosed with this. The next thing that I tell them is that you have to be strong, because if you are diagnosed with cancer, and you are not strong, then you are not going to last very long. From the moment that you are diagnosed you have to be strong because if you are weak, you are not going to get to a very far place. I have seen situations when patients begin the treatment and they start very bad - they’re depressed. The ones who start depressed sometimes don’t make it to survival. It’s like me. When I was diagnosed I was very positive. My doctors were surprised because they say that I came out of all this quickly. They didn’t think that I would come out of this so quickly but they say we think that you came out of all this quickly because you were positive, because you focused yourself on living, you did everything to live. It’s what I say to all the patients, “Give it your all going forward. Never look back, because if you look back they’re going to go, you have to look forward all the time, and you can never give up.”

My name is Jaime and I have been a cancer survivor since 2004.