My name is Francisco Valencia Jr. I was born in Cali Colombian on March 7, 1986 and I am a cancer survivor. I can’t believe I just wrote that. It is still sometimes difficult to accept what happened in 2011. Just yesterday my father was telling how sad he was during my fight with cancer and how it will break his heart seeing me laying in bed, almost as if I was dying slowly.

Around June of 2011 I was weighing in 158L this is 47LB less than my normal weight of 205LB. I had Cancer. I couldn’t believe it I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Did I do something wrong? Did I eat the wrong things? Did the Cancer spread? Why was this happening to me? My doctors couldn’t tell me my family was just as confused as I was. I never felt so lost in my life and confuse of where I was or if I was going to be here in December. I didn’t have the strength to ask my parents if they were ok. All I could do was apologize to them for the pain I had brought to my family. There was such a feeling of guilt, sad, lost and anger. All I can remember was thinking I would give everything to be healthy.

Then Chemo therapy came and I couldn’t walk. The air was thin and my lungs felt heavy. I remember feeling my heart slowing down. I felt as I was dying slowly. Because of this I refused to sleep in fear that I was not going to wake up. Unfort-unately for me my body had an allergy reaction to thechemotherapy and they had to shoot me up with medicine to counter affect the reaction. This made my veins burn. It felt like fire was traveling up my arms and into my body. I cried. Not so much because of the pain but of the thought this was actually happening. This happened for 6-7 hours a session for six months.

Now after a year and half of my body fighting this cancer I am currently in remission and have to check every three months for any cancer activity. Now I can sit in traffic and come to work. I can walk around on my own and breathe again. I can wake up early and go to sleep in peace. I’m gaining weight again and I recently join a gym where I can walk. And it feels amazing. I never felt so alive in my life and aware of the beautiful moments we overlook on a daily basis. I was blessed to spend the holidays with my

family this past year and I look forward to next year’s and the years after that. I see now how we don’t really appreciate how lucky we are until something that’s out of our control comes and tries to take everything from us. Now there’s no such thing as a bad day or stress. As long as I am alive every day is a good day because that’s another day I get to be here.

Francisco ValenciaAge: 25

Diffused Large B Cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma

“Time is our most precious commodity used it wisely”