Jimena Gaytan

I remember my mom returning from "seeing one of her friends "and telling my middle sister and me to meet her in her bedroom. We sat down, and that's when she told us she didn't meet a friend; she went to the doctor, and she had colon cancer stage IV. I was 10 years old, and my mom was 50.

Later, I found out that she had been having a lot of symptoms, but she dismissed them. She was a single mother with three kids; one studying in another country (U.S.), one in high school, and the other (me) in elementary school, so she kept working and didn’t go to the doctor until she needed to.

She had been throwing up, had blood in her poop, was very constipated, and could barely eat.

A few weeks after telling the family, we moved to my aunt's house, where she could take care of my Mom while my sister and I were in school. Later, my oldest sibling came back to take care of her.

My oldest sibling was the one in charge of taking care of Mom, cleaning her, making sure she drank her meds, and applying her injections. Whenever she had to go through one of the cleanings or injections, they made sure I wasn't in the room. My mom didn't want me to see her through that. Despite their efforts to shield me, I slowly started seeing my mom become a stick; she started losing weight and seemed increasingly tired, but she always smiled around me, so I never knew how big it was.

The doctors told us she had only a few months left, but she made it a whole year. She passed away on August 16, 2015.

9 years have passed, and I keep wishing for more time with her. The only thing I can say whenever someone asks me what I would have liked to change is that I wish she had gotten checked in time.

The screening process is very important; although we might not be the age for it, we still must check for any signs or symptoms, especially if we've had family members with colon cancer.