Cancer support

My dad was a driver in Manhattan and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, which was awesome. Cooking was really, really big. She would cook every single night. We'd have dinner together every night. And it was like my favorite thing ever. I'd watch her. I watched her for years, and then finally I started helping and so I always did that with her and that was awesome. Went to Cornell for undergrad. I had this lump on my neck and I kind of ignored it 'cause I was like, eh, this is nothing. Who cares what it is?" Got really sick in March, just got like the flu. But the doctor was like, "I don't wanna freak you out, "but what's this bump? "Like how long have you had it for?" And I was like oh I've had it since January, And he's like, "That's not okay. "You should probably go get it checked out." The night before I was supposed to go home for spring break, I woke up in the middle of the night with this really weird shooting pain in my back and, like right here in my, in my, like, chest. And I just like couldn't breathe. It was so bizarre. It lasted for like two hours. I was just lying in bed in like so much pain and just like totally random. Next day, I'm supposed to be going home. So I go home, go to the doctors and, and he's like, "Okay, like you need to get like I don't know "what this is. "So we need to get it tested. "Let's do a CT scan 'cuz that's like the only way "to really know if anything's wrong with you." And the results came back and they found masses in my liver, abdomen, pelvis and lung. And the doctor was like, "I'm so sorry. "Like I can't help you. "You have stage four lung cancer." Got in the car, driving home. That's the like the one time I cried, didn't cry after that pretty much ever. But that was like the one day I remember like breaking down from it. And my friend Isabelle, she was like, " You know. "like we know this doctor. "We're gonna get you an appointment with him stat." And it was like as good of an appointment as it could have ever been for like someone in my situation. He was so great. So nice. Like talked to us, laid everything out, like asked me personal questions, was just so nice. Like he was so caring. I was like all right, I can do this. This is okay. And so, yeah, so basically he was like, "We're gonna do these three chemos. "It's gonna be every three weeks. "You're gonna come in here. "It's gonna take six hours. "It's gonna be really long. "You're gonna feel really tired. "But like this is what we're gonna do." And then yeah, then it started from there and every three weeks after that I'd go in for chemo. It was six hours. I think I did nine rounds of it. And then now I'm on oral chemo. It's okay because I had have like all these other great things in my life that are okay. Emotionally, mentally it's, it's it's okay. You know, you're, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna get sick, but you still, you still live. You still do what you need to do. When I was first diagnosed, I had this random lung cancer foundation call me. And it was really cool 'cuz at the time I didn't know that people my age were diagnosed with stage four lung. I thought it was all old people who had been smoking, right. But that's not true for lung cancer. It's not. Anyone can get it. Doesn't matter. My sophomore year of college, I put on a 5k walk for Ingrid. We called it, it was "Jog for Ingrid" and we've held it every year since. So it's been going on for five years now at my school and it was great. I put it on. And so many people came out. We raised almost $60,000 my first year doing it on my campus. So now it's like a big philanthropy thing that happens at Cornell every year, which is so cool. And we've raised at this point, over like $120,000 for lung cancer. Which is great because it's a really underfunded disease. They don't wanna put any money into it because they think it's because you smoke. And it's such a sad stigma to have 'cuz it's not always the case. It's really important to think positively because mentally like you need to tell yourself, you know you're gonna be okay, you're gonna take this drug and it's gonna sting for a little bit but it's gonna be worth it. And as long as you think positively about it, even though the drug can be hard and you're sick of it and you wanna stop and you want it all to be over, as long as you're like, no. You know it's okay. You're gonna do this and it's gonna be okay. You're gonna be strong, you're gonna be positive. You're gonna keep fighting 'cuz it's worth it. And you're gonna do things that make you happy and then you'll be living a normal life.