Fatt Matt's Stories

It’s been quite sometime since everyones favorite cancer boy has given an update! Frankly I’ve just been lazy and haven’t written anything. Well, here’s a change, and an update!

I don’t even remember where I left off last time honestly, but, lots of exciting and normal life events have happened since my last post! I went to my senior prom, and it was amazing! It luckily fell in between two of my planned hospital stays, and I had an absolute blast. And just in case you were curious, a bald cancer head and a black suit go together quite nicely.

Prom wasn’t the only thing that happened either, I also graduated high school! I was one of four students to give a speech as well, and you can bet I pulled on everyone’s heartstrings with it. Getting to graduate on time was a huge blessing for me, and I’ve been so blessed throughout this process to have such a fantastic school to rely on for support and prayer. My absolute best friends are from my school and I couldn’t do any of this without them.

And for my final exciting event since my last post, I completed all of my inpatient stays at the hospital for chemo! I got to ring out of the hospital, and even though I still have lots of outpatient chemo left, it’s a milestone I was looking forward to ever since I was diagnosed. I love all my nurses and doctors on the 10th floor, but now I get to just think of them as friends and not my nurses!

And now, the question on your mind might be,”how are you feeling?” Thank you for asking, and I’m actually feeling better than I have in a while. I started my fourth phase of chemo on June 10th, and so far it’s been pretty bearable. I will say however, it hasn’t been all easy. My total treatment lasts until 2022. Lots of that is just me going in once a month for chemo, but it’s still not how I was expecting my adult life to start. I’ll get sad at random parts of the day thinking about how much I miss work, how much I miss my friends, and how much I miss normal life. Life with cancer isn’t one that I particularly recommend living, so if I could leave you with some advice, it would be to not get cancer.

That’s about all I have for now. Thank you for reading and following my story! Hopefully I can post more often, because I know that my life is definitely everyone’s number 1 priority. Be blessed!

After getting the worst news of my life, what is every day life like?

Well, it’s not all that exciting, and it’s definitely not fun. Once every week I go to the doctor’s office for treatment. That’s usually an all day endeavor, and that’s typically the only time I leave the house. I don’t go to school, I have to live with the fear of falling behind in my classes. I also haven’t worked in 7 weeks. You might be thinking, “So, what DOES he do with his time?” Well the answer to that question is simple…nothing. I’ll walk you through an average day in my life, leaving out no details. I wake up, stroll down the stairs and take my meds. Then, I sit on the couch for about 12 hours until I go to bed and repeat this process. Sorry if I bored you with those details, I did warn you though. The thing about cancer is that you’ll never know when your good days and bad days will be. On my good days I feel completely healthy, no problems whatsoever. I feel like I could go through an intense workout and still be energized.

Then there’s the bad days. The days where getting out of bed is the most exhausting task ever. The days where I have to use all of my energy just to do the dishes. The days where I nap for hours and still wake up feeling more exhausted then when I fell asleep. The days where I tell everyone “I feel great!” when I know that it’s a total lie. At one point I told someone that I’m an 18 year old in what feels like an 80 year old’s body. I have to watch my body fall apart as I get medicine that will only worsen that feeling.

Another thing that sucks about this is that now, my senior year of high school is almost ruined. While all my friends get to go to the movies or hang out, I get chemo or I have to stay home. The fear of me getting admitted to the hospital is always there, which makes me scared to make plans for my senior prom, or to make plans to actually be at my graduation. Our family vacations are cancelled because of this. Life has been turned completely upside down, and we have about 3 years left of this.

Now, I am sorry for how depressing this all sounds. My posts typically won’t be like this, but I’ve been having a couple of bad days and figured this would be the best time to post about the sad aspects of cancer. Hopefully this gave a decent look into what life is like with cancer, and sorry again for the sadness!

-Fatt Matt

It’s a long story so grab a snack

My life has been a roller coaster of events, however, 2018 had a LOT of ups and downs. Before we start with that, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Fatt Matt. Your first thought is most likely, “Wow that’s a mean nickname, he shouldn’t call himself that.” Well, I will never stop calling myself that so we can get that out of the way. That nickname was given to me by my older brother as a joke, but the name kinda stuck. I love it and it’s here to stay. Anyways, enough of that, back to who I am. I’m an 18 year old high school student from Northern Virginia, and I work full-time at Chick-fil-A as a store manager. So, I sound like a pretty normal guy huh? Well here’s where the twist comes in. On December 14th, 2018, I was diagnosed with leukemia, and ever since the doctor walked in the room and said, “I’m sorry, you have leukemia,” my life has been insane. I was admitted until the 26th (Merry Christmas right?), and then I was re-admitted the 28th until January 6th (and a Happy New Year). Thankfully I’ve been home ever since, and the hope is to keep it that way.

For those of you who don’t know much about leukemia (I didn’t even know it was a blood cancer until I was diagnosed) for teenagers and kids it’s a survivable cancer. So, I have a very good rate of surviving this. I’m actually in remission already! I’ll get back to that in a bit because I do have to go through treatment still.

So, what is life with cancer like? Well, so far it sucks. It started with the almost 3 weeks in the hospital. And now I sit at home doing mostly nothing. My family and friends have been SO supportive throughout this whole process. They never fail to cheer me up on my bad days, AND they’ve provided me with snacks, which in my mind shows genuine love.

Okay so, how do we treat this disease? The obvious answer is chemo. The way they give it to me is through a device called a central port, which is something they put in my chest and it connects to the Superior Vena Cava (the largest vessel in your heart) so that way they can put chemo in and draw blood without having to have an IV connected to my arm. So, after my first phase of treatment (called induction), the doctors informed us that I was in remission! This means that they can’t detect any cancer cells, however there are still some in me floating around. This is great news, but the bad part is that treatment is still 3 years. It lasts so long for a couple reasons, to kill off those stubborn cancer cells, and to make sure that this doesn’t come back.

During the next phase of treatment, I will lose my hair. Sadly, I know that because of the world we live in and how people are, I’ll either get weird looks when I go out in public, or people will talk to me very carefully because I’m the scary cancer guy. My family and friends won’t care at all, but I know that some people will, that’s just how some people are. And ultimately, I’m okay with that. If people want to judge me or give me weird looks without knowing who I am as a person, so be it. Cancer doesn’t define who I am. It will affect me for quite some time, but it’s not me. I am more than my cancer.

That’s all I’ve got. Hopefully this introduction didn’t bore you out of your mind. I do plan on writing regularly, mainly about my cancer treatments, but also about random life stories and thoughts if I’m bored. Thanks for reading about the exciting adventures of my life, I hope you enjoyed it.

-Fatt Matt