Third grade, eight years old. Fire trucks and ambulances in the distance, seeming as if they weren’t getting any closer. Backtrack about a month, my bedroom and a heating pad, we thought it was just growing pains. The next night, 2 o’clock am, tears and pain and a drive to the emergency room. The doctor said it was cancer, my mom said he was lying. Why would she believe him? I’ve only had these pains in my arm for about a week and a half, cancer can’t just appear like that. A long night in the hospital. No sleep. I didn’t understand what was going on, I was only eight years old. The doctors pulled my mom out of the room and I was transferred to Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital the next day, where I met Dr. Watkins, the doctor who took care of me during my stay, the doctor who officially diagnosed me. Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis, a disease where the Langerhans cells, a type of white blood cells, overproduce and build up in certain parts of the body and are able to produce tumors. It occurs in 1 in 200,000 children under the age of ten. I had a tumor in my right arm. Cancer. I was eight years old and just found that I had cancer. I didn’t know what I was supposed to think, how I was supposed to feel, if I was supposed to feel anything. LCH, they called it, because it was too long of a name for me to pronounce anyways. Growing pains. That’s all it was supposed to be. We were about a week away from Christmas, I never expected  to be sitting in a hospital bed with IVs connected to my arms and nurses coming in to check on me every hour. I was only there for eight days, but it felt like weeks. The constant feeling of uncertainty and anxiousness. One day was just the same as the last. There was never anything new and exciting happening, though the staff tried their best to keep all of the children in high spirits. They brought small tricycles by our rooms and walked next to us as we rode around. There was a young girl with whom I shared a room, Serena. She was about the same age as I was, a little shorter with bright blue eyes and always wore a warm, knitted beanie. Serena and I became best friends in the short amount of time I got to know her. Since it was around Christmas time, she and I were able to go around the hospital to all of the other children who weren’t allowed to leave their rooms and we decorated their windows with window paint. I have the most vivid memories of Serena and I running around the hospital like we owned the place, but then one day she left and I never got to see her again. I found out that Serena had leukemia and was going through Chemotherapy. She was in the hospital for two weeks with a constant IV connected to her, then left for two weeks, and would return and repeat. Days after Serena left I was led into surgery where they would remove the tumor from my arm. I remember going into the surgery room with a strawberry mask on my face and counting down from ten. I was knocked out by seven. After the surgery was performed I was sent back to my room and was checked up there. The surgery went well, as planned, but since I still needed to continue receiving medication through IVs, I had to stay in the hospital until I was completely healed, which meant I would be spending Christmas in the hospital. Imagine being eight years old and worrying about whether or not Santa would be able to deliver your gifts to your hospital bedroom, heart-wrenching. I hear my mom say goodbye to my aunt on the phone and she rushes to find a nurse. The nurse comes back along with my mom and Dr. Watkins. A picc line, a permanent IV, my gateway to Christmas at home. It required another surgery, but hey what’s one more right? The next day I was once again, put onto the surgery table counting down from ten. I woke up to find my mom and all of the doctors and nurses standing above me waiting for me to wake up. It seemed like I walked right out of the surgery room to my car as soon as I was finished. I was finally able to go home. It was three days before Christmas and I was going home. It was a long ride home, my arm was still sore from the previous surgeries, but I was so ready to sleep in my own bed. Home. The sweet smell of cinnamon apples as I stride in the front door. I zoom straight to my room and lay on my bed and fall asleep. Fast forward a month from now and I no longer have this picc line, but now a sling on my arm to prevent any harm, since the surgery is still relevantly new so I had to be very careful. It was January and I was at my dad’s softball tournament riding around on my bike. My brothers and I were riding over speed bumps in the parking lot having fun, messing around, just being kids. I remember going over a speed bump and falling on my right side. Snap. My arm was clearly broken, a clean break. My brothers ran to find my grandpa and an adult called 911. After about a minute my brothers were back with my grandpa and I was lying on the floor with a jacket underneath my head and what seemed to be hundreds of people surrounding me. I began to hear sirens in the distance, but it seemed like it took them forever to finally get to me, as if they weren’t getting any closer. They finally arrived and by that time my dad had stopped his game and was there with me. The ride in the ambulance to the hospital was extremely painful and very bumpy. By the time I got to the hospital, Dr. Watkins was already waiting for me in the emergency room with a very disappointed look on his face. He told me to be careful, and I know I wasn’t, but I was just a kid, careful wasn’t in my vocabulary. Nothing was completely wrong with my arm at all. I spent about half of the day in the hospital and was later released with a temporary cast and a constant reminder of the very eventful day. My arm completely healed about a month and a half later and I was free of my cast. To this day, I have a three-inch scar on the inside of my right arm, which I consider nothing less than a battle scar. Heating pads and growing pains. Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. Dr. Watkins. LCH. Cancer. Sirens and painful ambulance rides. Third grade, eight years old.