Single Player: Humor, Love, Breast Cancer and a Gaming Girl... by Jamie Nicole Page B

glossary. Apparently that’s what my dad was shooting for. The morning I woke up with clean underwear relief surged through me with the power of a tsunami wave coming ashore. During the course of that week I’d thrown out all the underwear I couldn’t scrub clean, hid the clothing I was still working stains out of in bags under my bed, and anything else I could do to keep this horrible news from my ailing father.
    Imagine my shock a month later when I started to bleed again, this time… at school. Walking to the cafeteria I heard a couple of the meaner boys from my class laughing and cutting up behind me. Like I was taught to do I ignored them, until I caught the words, “that looks like blood or diarrhea on her butt,” before they broke out into another round of overzealous guffaws. Immediately I knew what they were seeing because now that it was brought to my attention I could feel it as well. It was me they were laughing at and the cancer was back. Maybe it had never left and was growing bigger inside me. Here, on the walk to the school cafeteria was my very first encounter with another kind of bully, the bully heretofore known as: The Panic Attack. 
    Running, of course, was my first instinct. They were on to something when they discovered that whole fight or flight instinct thing in us humans, it’s a dead-on analogy.  What I’ve learned about myself over the years is that I will always run when faced with a situation that scares me, and this bleeding from my innards was definitely able to be filed away under the category of: this situation scares me.
    When my teacher couldn’t find me after lunch and I didn’t show back up to class she began to panic as well.  The Panic began to spread like the bitch that it is and soon the entire school was on lockdown. After they searched the other classrooms for me and made several announcements over the school-wide intercom system for me to report back to either my classroom or to the front office, all of which I heard and then vigorously ignored, my father was called. He showed up at the school minutes later, bald and pasty after a month of heavy chemo, panic stricken and sweaty with fever. 
    The local police department was called in and I was located within minutes by the K-9 officer and his dog.  Blood was something the shrewd shepherd was taught to sniff out and I was an easy target, seeing that I was about to bleed out. The K-9 officer called over the female deputy and she very carefully coerced me from the stall I had been holed up in since going missing. After an hour of crouching on the toilet lid to hide my position, and my dangling feet, my twig-thin legs were unsteady and cramped as I finally exited my hiding spot. To this day I have no idea what my plans were to escape. I only knew that I didn’t want to be found. I didn’t want to face my family with the devastating news of my cancer and impending death.
    My dad rushed to the restroom as soon as he overheard the call come through that they’d found me. I’ll never forget the obvious relief on his face as he entered the dingy room and looked into my weary eyes. As sick as he was he looked genuinely happy and all because his little girl was safe. Unfortunately I now had no other choice than to ruin everything he believed to be true because my safety was only an illusion. So here in the filthy girls’ room of the fifth grade hall was where I would have to deliver my tragic news. Actually, it was really quite fitting considering our lives were literally, “in the toilet”. 
    Before I was able to speak even a single word my father wrapped me up in his loving arms, cradling me with his wool sweater, and surrounded me in his special brand of fatherly warmth that in turn seeped through to my sad soul providing comfort in only the way that a father could. 
    “Why are you hiding baby girl? You sure gave me and all these other nice people quite a scare.” The officer left us alone when she thought I was