Four months ago, Megan walked into the kitchen and told me she’d found a lump. She was twenty-four. Twenty-four. And she was already fighting for her life, while her friends were talking about wedding dresses and baby showers. For three days, I couldn’t breathe.
When she started chemotherapy, she lost her hair in less than two weeks. I watched her sitting in the bathroom, her gaze lost, locks falling into the sink, and I… I could only hold her tight.
But there’s one thing no one tells you about cancer: those who face it need something to hold, to touch, to do with their hands while the poison flows through their blood.
Megan started crocheting during the infusions. At first, the nurses laughed. One of them told her, “Aren’t you a bit young for this, honey?” I felt my blood boil.
But Megan just smiled. And she kept going. Stitch after stitch, row after row. She had found a wonderful pattern online and decided she would make the warmest, softest sweater she could imagine. After a few days, no one was laughing anymore. Her hands were creating something incredible.
Today, the news arrived. The tumor has shrunk by half. The nodules in her lungs? Gone. Completely. The doctor kept rereading his notes, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. I broke down right there, in that cold, sterile room. And Megan? She sat calmly, in her handmade sweater, with a smile that seemed to embrace the world, asking if she could finally go see the kittens at the shelter. She had been waiting for them for weeks.
And do you know what she did? She brought them home. All four of them. Now our house is full of paws, purrs, and balls of yarn everywhere. It’s full of life.