Somewhat long and emotional story... Please read.

Early this year we had a huge ice storm here in kentucky. I'm sure anyone that lives around here (tennessee, indiana, illinois, ohio, etc) knows exactly what im talking about. It basically knocked out power for a week , couldn't hardly drive, etc. During that time we lived rather far in the "countryside". My stepfather finally got up enough courage to drive us out of our house and try and get us to town. (Roads were a solid sheet of ice might i mention, as well as powerlines all over the road.) We get to town and stay at my aunts house. (this is in late january btw). The next day my stepdad makes it to work (they have power.. lol, right next to aunts house). Since we only have one car out and the streets aren't as bad in town, my mom takes him to work and then we leave so we can do stuff or something. It comes lunch time, we go to pick him up... I go in and ask if i can go to his office. The person picks up the phone, someone else comes out and goes to the car. He had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital (not by ambulance, someone he trusts.. roads were a little icy you know). To make a longe story short, we find out he has 2 brain tumors, as well as 1 lung tumor. He was diagnosed with stage 4, melanoma (skin cancer). Fast forward to now (august 9th)......

My stepdad has had 1 brain surgery, 1 lung surgery, radiation, and 2 rounds of 5-straight days of chemo therapy (2 more 5-day straight session to go), seperated by 1 month apart. He has no new occurences / no new tumors.

Now lets rewind a few days. I went to the doctor probably a month or 2 ago about headaches that i ALWAYS have, or at least it seems like i always have them. He gave me some kind of sinus medicine because he thought it was my sinuses. Finished the medicine, waited a few weeks, went back because it didnt help. He decides to check and see if it IS my sinuses, so we do a CT Scan of my head. Turns out I have a 4.5 cm "mass" in my pituatary gland. As of now , i don't know anything other than that. I'm waiting until august 18th to get a MRI w/ and w/o contrast, then i will see a pedatric neurosurgeon on lousville who will tell me more about what it is and what i'm going to do about it. This also interferes with my school. I planned on taking college classes, after a half of a day of high school (I'm 17 years old, senior in high school, and a cheapassgamer.) Now, my doctors appointment(s) are scheduled the same day those classes are to start, and i know i will be missing a lot of school, so i decided i need to drop those for now (they were going to be free too... ugh!), because i need to do well and not be so stressed out and get behind. I think my school is going to work out where maybe i can just go half a day and put me on a co op (work half a day) schedule, where i may not actually have to work...

As for how i feel right now, just perfectly fine. If i go to the store and walk around nobody can tell that im "sick". Also my stepdad did delay his chemotherapy 1 month, so he could regain strength... this is rather strange, because if he didn't delay it , i would have never went to the doctor again. Also think about how he happened to just decided to get out and go to town in the middle of the ice storm. What would he have done if we stayed home, and had a seizure there? You can only drive extremely slow on ice...

Also my mom is about to have a nervous breakdown or something. Think about how hard for her it is to handle knowing all of this stuff. She is so worried.

It's crazy how things happen, and that things have worked out somewhat perfectly (as far as finding out about sickness). As for me, i've never had surgery in my life, so of course im scared and nervous. My best hopes are that this is a benign tumor in the pituatary gland, and they can go through my nose and get it out.

A week ago i was debating on whether i should buy this, or buy this, why i should or shouldn't save money , random crap that people probably think about all the time. Now i'm thinking a lot differently, but heck i still want to go to target and take advantage of the B1G1 blu ray (select titles), lol... I am and will always be cheapass no matter what!

So next time before you are ready to give up on something, and think you have it tough, just think about everyone else in the world. I know that i'm one of many people this may happen to, but you just have to do what you have to do. Just need to pray, and think for the best not only for me, but my stepfather as well.