For Mom

My mother asked me to write something for her class reunion and so here goes it.

A note from Jennyvi Dizon, daughter of Quirubina Dizon

First, I have to say that growing up I always noticed my mother was the life of the party and was so fun to be around. Even as a child, all I wanted to do was hang out with my mom rather than be with friends my own age. I wanted to be just like her and even wore her clothes to school.

I still want to be very much like my mother, not only for her personality, but for her strength and her will to live. I have seen her battle through many difficult situations and countless illnesses. Enough to know that it takes a certain amount of mental and physical stability to get through what my mother has gone through.

She told me once that she had almost drowned when she was 9, not knowing how to swim she had kept calm and raised her hand high enough so a passerby was able to save her. But as remarkable as that seems, she has gone through even more after that.

In 1991, when my mother was 39 years old she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I don't think it was a coincidence that my mother had a stroke when she was at the doctor's office that day. While she was in the hospital for the stroke, she had been told that they had found a lump and later on to find that the lump was malignant.

My mother had felt the lump there before, but just thought it was normal hardened tissue. She had just had my little sister the year before and thought the change was due to common things after a pregnancy and having another baby. But after the stroke, there was an urgency to remove the malignant lump before the cancer could spread any further.

Unfortunately, they could not just remove the lump they had to remove her entire breast. After several months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, my mother was still strong and in high spirits. She was even able to keep her own hair, although the treatments were making most of it fall out.

But even after all the many months of treatment, the cancer had spread to her other breast and again, the entire breast had to be removed. Personally, I think I would have given up and would dread going through another round of chemo and radiation. But my mother is a fighter and because of her spirit, I know that any person has it in them to try to live.

Even when life gets to be too hard or there doesn't seem to be any answers, I know to keep going forward. When I feel like giving up, I just remember what my mother has shown to me and our family. The clear message of just fighting through any tough situation or even just fighting for strength physically and mentally on a daily basis.