Meet Christine
Christine’s family wrote to us in September 2021 to share her story with the world. The following is an excerpt from a poetic novel written by Christine about her 15-year battle with cancer. Christine’s father discovered her work after her passing from a secondary brain tumor at the age of 17.
“My name is Christine and I am a 15-year-old childhood cancer survivor.
I thought that after I was discharged from the hospital everything would be normal or even sort of normal, but that’s not how this story goes. You see, somewhere through all this my soul has been scarred and a curse cast upon myself, a curse I will take to my grave.
My story begins at the age of three at The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
I saw the tears in my mother’s eyes and the concern on my father’s face. I had no idea why or what was happening. “What’s going on momma?” I asked her. She didn’t reply, she just held my hand and started to cry.
“Less than 40% chance is not what anyone would have hoped for. But you can’t change the odds; you can only fight against them.”
When we found out that I had ALL, (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) my family members tried to explain to me what was going to happen, but I know now that nothing in the entire world could prepared me for what was about to happen.
Before I knew it, I was hooked up to an IV and all my long blonde gorgeous hair was gone, once perfectly placed on my two-year-old head, now on my pillow.
In the hospital I met an Angel, her name was Sarah. She was in the room next to me and she had leukemia too. She was a very sweet girl and we had fun together, she helped me not to feel as different. We shared a lot of things like pizza parties, we played in the art room and we gave each other the drugs that were impossible to take. It seemed much easier to swallow when she gave them to me, compared to 5 nurses holding me down while they poured it down my throat. Out of all my friends on the fourth floor she was the best. She was an amazing friend even if she was only 3.
About a year later my angel Sarah went back to heaven. She died in her sleep, because the doctors failed to find a match for her bone marrow transplant.
Sitting in my hospital bed with the sounds of people crying and other children screaming out in pain and agony echoing through my head, I dream...
What If Faith is Not Enough?
© 2016 Christine Mulvihill
When reality finally hits you it hurts
When the truth comes into focus it’s brutally painful.
Hope isn't always enough
It’s not always a happy ending.
What happens when faith is not enough?
I get hot flashes
My depression splashes
My soul is cold like stone,
The fear of being alone.
So now I lay me down to sleep
I pray you lord my soul to keep
Don’t let me die before I wake
I pray you lord my soul do not take.
I barely have a past
And may have no future
Empty pages of a book
A story left unwritten
A life left unlived
A hope left in the dust.
Please don't take me yet
Your mercy you won't regret
I am down on my knees
Begging you please
Don’t take me away.
At night I dream a misty graveyard
A tombstone the name I cannot see
A flashlight in the darkness
A figure so lifeless I cannot breathe,
Then I awake not as fearless as I may seem.
If this is my future
And if it comes to pass
And this breath be my last
Then this thought to you I cast.
What if faith is not enough?
Then life would be rather tough
With nothing to believe in
And nothing to justify
Nothing to keep you sane
Nothing to grasp when you fall
You will have nothing, nothing at all.
Sometimes that is how I am
Falling in the darkness
With nothing to take hold
This feeling leaves me cold
hearted, soulless, empty.
All I feel is the pain of being unreal
No one knows how this life feels,
When you are so lifeless.
So now I lay me down to cry
I pray you lord you can't let me die.
Now I lay me down to sleep
Close my eyes without a peep
Never to be opened again.
Read more of Christine’s stories and poems at ChildhoodCancerSurvivor.com.