‘Why me? Why couldn’t you just let me die?’ (News)

There’s nothing in life that can prepare you for it and, as much as you want to understand it, you will never understand it until you get it yourself.

Like most of you here tonight, I have experienced many tragedies watching friends and families fall ill and sometimes losing their lives to cancer.

Cancer sucks and, if you get it, it will be the hardest thing you will ever do.

Last fall, the CT scan found a large mass on and embedded in my liver.

Eventually the mass turned out to be a tumour that was so large it was bulging out of the side of my abdomen right here.

Anyway when they removed it, it turned out to be 15 pounds.

It was the size of a small volleyball and it took 12 hours to get out and eventually I had to have another surgery to take the rest of it out.

My surgeon said it was the most difficult and complicated surgery he has ever faced in his 30 years of his career and it sucked. A lot.

So anyway I became medically famous which is kind of cool but it sucks at the same time, just – it sucks.

So I went through all of that and in addition, I was asleep for an entire month. Just gone – an entire month out of my life.

And 75 per cent of my liver was removed and, fun fact, your liver does grow back so I have a brand new liver and with that I also have a new perspective on life.

Cancer, I feel like in our society, is presented prettier than what it actually is.

Yes, I received a wish from Make a Wish and I will be putting myself in my favourite video game, I ate dinner and went shopping with Mike Zimmer, the head football coach of the Vikings, and some of the Viking players and I had selfies with the Minnesota Wild.

Although those things are very nice, it will never make up what I had to go through.

When I first woke up I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t go to the bathroom, sit up, I couldn’t do anything.

At night, I would cry and scream and yell at God: Why me? Why did you leave me like this? Why couldn’t you just let me die?

I was in the hospital for a total of three months, 44 of those days in ICU and almost five months of chemo.

I had a total of three major surgeries and many more small procedures.

Although there was never a time I was truly alone, a lot of the battles I faced required me to fight on my own.

I was so desperate to get out and meet people who were just like me, to truly understand what I was going through.

If you ever want to go to the most depressing place in the world, it would be any children’s hospital on the cancer floor.

It was hard finding friends.

Most of the patients never left the room, too depressed to live their life and they were only focused on fighting the fight.

In the hospital I did a lot of thinking.

I recalled the book, The Fault in Our Stars. Raise your hand if you read it, or watched the movie.

Yeah, did any of you like it? Yeah well I hated it [laughter].

The reason why I hated it so much was the main character’s attitude toward cancer and life.

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She was depressed and helpless throughout the book and until she was happy – she was only happy when she found her new man.

And spoiler alert, he does die and she eventually goes back to being depressed.

So I decided that I was not going to be that girl. I was going to live every moment of my life like it was my last.

And so I changed my whole attitude around and I started thinking about the positives first and then the negatives.

I started looking at the hospital instead of a prison, but as a place to heal.

And I would even correct my family and friends when they said something negative about my treatment.

I took every chance I had to meet other kids, I went to every music therapy session, every movie night, and every chance I had I  insisted on sharing each other’s Snapchats.

I convinced myself that I will only get better and that’s exactly what happened, I was determined to get my life back.

Everyone in their school career eventually comes to the thought that it would be nice to stop going to school.

At first you’ll have a sense of freedom, a stress-free life, and you will start to work on skills you wouldn’t have if you were not in school.

But eventually I know it’s hard to believe, but you’ll begin to miss it, a lot.

A word people tend not to connect with cancer is loneliness.

Although I’m not in treatment anymore it still affects me greatly today.

When people say they hate school, they tend to forget about their friends.

You get to see them everyday, talk to them at lunch, work on school projects and participate in after school activities together.

I am lucky if I get to see them twice a month.

I still find myself struggling to decide if I want to continue hanging with my friends at Perkins at 1 o’clock in the morning or go home and sleep because I can barely walk straight.

The comment I hate the most is ‘Amara, you are so brave.’ Now let that sink in and think about it.

I didn’t have a damn choice to be brave or not. I had to be or I would have died.

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As a performer I love attention but I hate getting attention because of my cancer.

I want people to praise me because I’m good at singing, I’m a good actress, I love to play piano and I love being part of the band.

The only thing I will regret from high school is if I leave only being known as the girl who has cancer. I want to be remembered for who I am, not the events that happened to me.

Some of the biggest life lessons I have learned is to never take a day for granted, to be thankful for what you have, that life is bigger than this moment and that saying I’m sorry gets old sometimes and you wish people would just let it suck.

It’s scary getting cancer knowing right now, it’s impossible for me to be truly cancer free and that I could get it again.

But until then, you better watch out world, because I’m coming for you.