Guthier 1

Susan Guthier
Professor Corri Ditch
English 113B
8 May 2015
Childhood Lost
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley has always been easy for a middle class catholic
girl with a European background, but that comes to a screeching halt when you are diagnosed
with cancer at nine years old. This influenced and still influences the way I live my life, now I
prefer talking to adults rather than my own peers. For five years of chemotherapy my space was
at Childrens Hospital and in isolation; with no friends, no school, and no one to develop my
social skills with peers and teachers. I am going to talk about the differences between what a
normal childhood wouldve been like and what I went through being a cancer patient for five
years. I will examine space and culture while I was at Childrens Hospital, and the difference
between being in isolation and having a roommate. How having cancer changed my social life
with the people around me today.
I was in third grade and I kept getting sick with flu like symptoms. I was tired and
weak. My doctor did not know what was wrong with me and kept trying different treatments and
tests. Until finally my doctor sent me to Childrens Hospital because my knees began to swell
and I could not walk. In the emergency room I saw a Rheumatologist who said I had arthritis
and wanted to send me home, but the emergency room doctor said lets run more tests. That
was the beginning of the end for being a social butterfly and spending time with friends. I had
Leukemia, and I felt scared. They immediately admitted me and I spent the first of many weeks
at Childrens Hospital.

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Over the next five years I was either isolated, had roommates, or sometimes I could go
home for a short while. During isolation I was not allowed to have visitors, anyone who had a
simple cold could make me very sick. This was because I had no immunities to fight off
infections. The chemotherapy suppressed my immune system. This meant no friends and
sometimes spending holidays in the hospital like Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and
summer which give it is not a holiday, but still I could not go outside. No getting to trick-ortreating with friend and couldnt fly to see my dads side of the family for Christmas, no my
white blood cells are too low. It felt like prison. The people that were mostly around me were
my mother, the women who would do anything for me, if I needed anything she got it, and my
father who would watch movies with me. They both were there for me, and so were the nurses
who were kind and gentle, the doctors, some with cold hands, which was not fun, but they were
also kind and trusting. The roommates, most were nice and easy to take, because most of the
time they had Leukemia too. I remember riding on the IV poles down the hall the most of all,
watching movies, coloring together, going to the playroom, one time one of my roommates
bought me a glass angle which I still have to this day.
There was a lot of drama in my life then, if I had a temperature over 100 degrees we
headed for the emergency room. Where we sat around for many, many hours waiting for a
hospital bed to open up, and we would be there for two weeks at a time. Life at the hospital was
like a weird and sometimes fun experience. In the article Self- Identity and Culture by Jackson,
Glenn, and Williams they talked about personal space and reference a quote that states
Regardless of their properties, spaces have a tremendous influence on how people think about
their identity psychologically and socially. Even though my culture was as a middle class,
European (Irish, German, and Italian) who was used to having three feet of personal space. Like

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when we were kids and we learn personal space. The culture in the hospital didnt allow me to
have any personal space a lot of the time. Nurses took my temperature and blood pressure every
thirty minutes all night and all day, along with giving me medications and shots. I had no
privacy. I believe I had culture shock while I was in the hospital. This affected my self- identity.
At the time I felt like I was being invaded upon like I had no rights. As a result I get annoyed
when people are in my personal space. I was in crisis, and mortal peril.
Communicating at the hospital was difficult for many reasons. First, I needed to learn a
new vocabulary. My new words were Lumbar puncture, Vincristine, port-a-cath, pic- line,
chemotherapy, oncology, intra-venous, physical therapy, radiation, x-ray, child-life. Second, we
had to always be on guard to make sure that the nurses, doctors, surgeons were all on the same
page. We kept notebooks to use as references to communicate with everyone that the proper
medicine and amounts were being given to me at the right times. When I needed a pain
medicine, they had a chart that had faces from happy to sad, helping me to communicate how
much pain I was in during my visits, and thus determining how much pain medicine I should be
getting. This was my new life and my new culture.
It was not all bad there were some fun times. Talking with roommates, going to the
playroom, arts and crafts, endless movies and TV. Riding on my I.V. pole with my friends down
the hallway of the Oncology clinic, also making glove people out of gloves filled with water.
Every Wednesday the parents of an ex-patient would come to the oncology clinic and bring free
pretzels to all the patients and staff, I think as a sort of a thank you. Once a week the book mobile
came and gave books to the patients. My best memories are of the therapy dogs. Once a week I
would get a visit from a warm fuzzy puppy dog, and I really enjoyed their company. They would

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sit on my bed and I could cuddle with them. In a way it was like my dogs at home were with
me.
During this period I rarely went to school, and was mostly home schooled, depending my
level of health. When I was home schooled I had many professionals come to my house; there
were physical therapists, teachers, art therapists, and occupational therapists. In contrast if this
had not happened I would have been going to my elementary school every day, socializing with
my friends, and learning the important social skills needed to make and keep friendships going.
This gap at a critical time in my development still impacts my ability to make and keep friends
and establish lasting relationships. I have been told by my doctors that this sort of problem isnt
unusual for someone that has gone through what I have. In the report Children With Cancer;
Effects and Educational Implications Sarah McDougal quotes researchers Varni, Katz,
Colegrove and Dolgin offer a reason for these psychological difficulties; they state that "the
chronic strains of childhood cancer, interact to negatively impact social and psychological
adjustment I can relate to this quote because this is what happened and same but not all is still
happening to me. My hair has grown back to its original length and I am not taking treatments
that will make me sick. For the strain I am still facing even now, is being social with peers and
professors and its sometime hard to get my point across. It is sometimes so bad that I reach a
point where the peers that I am talking to can not understand me, that makes me feel like cancer
took my voice away and gave it back in a way it was not like before, not mine, thats why I have
a speech problem.
In the article Self- Identity and Culture by Jackson, Glenn, and Williams they talk about
Meads Generalized other. Mead asserts that people construct their self-identity based upon the
perceptions of others. Each person has the ability to reflect upon self from a figurative distance

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in order to view self as an object. This means that a person is thinking about what people think
of them. For example, when children first saw me they thought I was a boy. When adults saw me
they saw a girl who is going through hard times. This made me feel like I was the center of
attention but not in a good way. I saw myself as a space alien, I saw myself this way like space
aliens because people stare at me I feel like they are judge me. That was the way I felt when they
looked at me, judged and misunderstood.
Even though I had cancer, I turned out being happier at this point in my life, much like
Melissa Moody the woman in the movie Happy that got hit by a car, she said that she has a
better view of life now and I do too. I feel the same way by going through cancer it made me
stronger as an individual. For example, I have achieved a lot after having cancer, like getting my
Gold Award in Girl Scouts and getting honors when I graduated high school. We are alike
because we both survived something that not a lot of people go through and came out better
despite the adversity.
Through my life so far I have faced adversity and experiences no child or adult for that
matter should have to go through. I have learned a lot about advocating for the things I need and
have been called tenacious by my teachers, leaders, and my parents. I have missed out on the
experiences I would have had if I wasnt facing my own mortality and fighting for my place in
this world. I am dealing with how this influences the way I live my life now and going forward.
But I have lived my life in a different way and found moments of joy, love and had experiences,
and opportunities that I would not have had. I am becoming the person I am destined to be.

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Works Cited
Glee Cerise L., Jackson Ronald L., Williams Kasha Morant. Self- Identity and Culture. SelfIdentity and Culture. 2003. Web. 29 January. 2015
Happy. Dir. Roko Belic. Wadi Rum Films, 2011. Streaming Video.
McDougal, Sarah. "Children With Cancer." Children With Cancer. N.p., 11 Dec. 1997. Web. 19
Feb. 2015.
Toro, Annie. "Psychological Impact of Childhood Cancer." Academe 86.1 (2000): 66-68.
American Psychological Association. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <apa.org>.