Krystal: A Sister's Story

Listen With 6 minutes, 26 seconds.

My name is Krystal. I'm 28 years old. I'm living in Texas, married, and I have a 13-month-old daughter. My story is about my sister, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease when I was 10 years old. She was 13 years old at the time. What happened was she found a lump on her neck and Mom took her to the doctor. They removed the lump and that's how they diagnosed it as Hodgkin's' disease. When the lump was removed they ran more tests. They started her on radiation and I think they staged her as IIA at that time.

So after she was diagnosed, she had her spleen removed. Once her radiation treatments were done, she went into remission for about six years. So, throughout most of her high school years, she was cancer-free. When she was 19 years old, the cancer came back. This was in 1989. This time they treated it with radiation and chemo. I just remember my parents always taking her to the doctor all the time, getting some sort of test or treatment or anything else, throughout high school. After I graduated from high school, I moved to Phoenix. My sister stayed in California, living with my parents for a couple more years.

She was still going through chemo at the time and then she moved to Phoenix. She was still able to go to college and she got her certificate to be a medical assistant. She went to work as a medical assistant, in a preventative medicine type of doctor's office. She acted like the chemo never held her back. She went on with life as normal. I mean, whether she lost her hair or not, she went on normal. That was until about 1996, and then she started having problems.

Cancer comes back - moving back home

In January 1997, my parents were living in Dallas at the time. My dad drove out to Phoenix, picked up my sister, and took her back to Dallas to live with them. It seemed like the doctor she was seeing in Phoenix wasn't really helping her at all because she never got any better. It seemed like she just went down hill. So this doctor they went to in Dallas was at Baylor Medical Center. He immediately put her on a new kind of chemotherapy, and within a couple of weeks, she was almost back to normal.

Once he got her to this point, he decided he wanted to try a bone marrow transplant. So they went through all her tests for that. Everything came out that she could have used her own bone marrow and done a stem cell type transplant thing but they wanted to try, if they could, to use someone else's bone marrow that hadn't been through so much radiation and chemo that she went through. So, with me being her only sibling, I was tested. Luckily, I was a perfect match. So that year, I also, decided to go ahead and move to the Dallas area.

In August 1, 1997, they did the transplant. My sister was in the hospital for a couple of weeks before the transplant to undergo some chemotherapy. When I woke up from surgery, I had a huge bandage across my back hip area, and I felt pretty sore. But I wanted to get up and go to my sister, so I could see her. However, the nurse told me that they wouldn't let me go up there unless I ate something, and kept it down. Well, that didn't work. They ended up drugging me up, and I slept most of the day.

Third recurrence and losing the battle

One week after she got my bone marrow, she was home from the hospital, which was pretty miraculous. She did very well, without any side effects, or any rejection, or anything. And all that went on for about a year. She went back to school. She was trying to get her degree for more stuff in the medical field. And then, probably about a year later, she started having problems breathing and stuff like that. They found out one of her lungs was collapsed. They figured that there was some sort of a blockage in her lung at the time she had a transplant. That at the time of the surgery, all the chemo they gave her, didn't actually get actually get through all of her system. So, the cancer was back in her lungs this time.

So, she was back on the chemo again. This went on and off--different kinds of chemos--all throughout the next couple of years. And then, finally, on December 16 of last year, at thirty years old, she passed away. She was home at the time. We were all there with her, and she wasn't in any pain. We had hospice care there to help take care of her. She was ready to go, so it kind of made it a little easier on all of us. Some of the things I thought about through all of this were always, "Is she ever going to get better?" And, of course, everybody always thinks about the thought of when they're going to die. Of course, when she was first diagnosed, I was only ten years old. I didn't understand everything she was going through.

Dealing with the loss and trying to move on

So, I basically grew up learning what cancer was all about. I went through all kinds of different stages, like denial, hope, anxiety, anger. I went through about every emotion people go through in a whole lifetime. Right now, I'm thankful that she's at peace, and no longer in pain, having to go through chemo, and all that other stuff that's involved with cancer. I know everybody says Hodgkin's disease is one of the cancers that you would like to get; but I've still seen several people die young, because of it. So, hopefully some day, maybe they'll get a cure for it all.

I guess one of the things that gave me strength, were my sister was being so strong all the time, and just trying to live a normal life. My family and I are real close, and we all support one another. And another big thing is that I have a 13-month-old daughter. That's going to help me get through all this. So, my sister would be an aunt for at least three months of her life.

Right now, I'm just moving on with life, just being a wife and a mommy. My parents go to a grief support group with their church. And I, of course, talk to family and friends about everything.

Any final thoughts I would say for anybody that's ever a caregiver for someone with cancer, is to just always be supportive. Don't try to push people the wrong way or try to act like you know how they're feeling, because most of us don't. I guess that's all I can say. Just be supportive, and spend as much time with your loved ones as you want, because life is too short.

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