Photo: FacebookRaquel Coronell Uribe was ready for a relaxing break following a stressful fall semester at Harvard University, when she received the news that her cancer had returned.Uribe penned anopen letterin the Harvard Crimson on Sunday revealing that just days after hitting the “five-year mark from the end of treatment” in December, her longtime oncologist, Dr. De Angulo had tears in his eyes as he conducted a test.“Forty-eight hours and a bone marrow aspiration later, he confirmed that I had beaten the odds again — but this time, there were no bells or celebrations,” Uribe writes. “The leukemia that had been so unlikely to return was back with a vengeance, leading a military insurgency on my until-then-at-peace bone marrow. Ready to devour me from the inside out, just when I thought it never would.“The senior revealed she had spent much of the fall semester feeling exhausted, unmotivated, and sore. She struggled to attend class and get her work done, and to eat and sleep regularly. “I felt needles in my shoulder so sharp that I ground my teeth to dust, gulped down more painkillers than I care to admit, and ended up at the emergency room not once but twice,” she wrote.In hindsight, she can see it was more than just the stress of being a senior and president of theCrimson— the country’s oldest daily college newspaper, and a role shecalled"the absolute honor of a lifetime.“Now, she’s preparing to undergo chemotherapy treatment once again, and she describes the world feeling like a tease of all the things she can’t have. “It’s as if the world is taunting you, reminding you that it’s your last day of freedom before that life-saving poison exiles you to a dark room or a hospital bed, or generally anywhere near a receptacle to weather its harsh side effects.“As she once again faces a long health battle, she compares the feeling of starting chemo to that of shipping off to war, the feelings of undergoing the treatment as “life-crushing, life-sucking, life-suppressing.“She first battled leukemia at age 16, she writes, recalling missing out on the experiences of “sneaking out” to parties in high school, and watching her peers navigate where they’d spend the next four years of their lives, “shopping around for a future,” while she wondered whether she had four more years at all.One day, it all ended. She rang the “glorious bell that marked the end of treatment,” applied to college, attended Harvard, and lived her life. But she writes that she always felt she was “living on borrowed time.“Despite reaching the five-year mark where she was considered to be cancer-free permanently, her chances for relapse were “so statistically low” that she was “considered fully free of the disease,” Uribe’s winter break brought a new battle instead of a permanent cease-fire.Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.“I don’t have a neat conclusion to offer — no inspirational words, no promise that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ no certainty that after all of this, I’ll come out stronger on the other side,” she writes. “I was born on a day when God was sick. Maybe he was battling with himself, then, too.”
Photo: Facebook
Raquel Coronell Uribe was ready for a relaxing break following a stressful fall semester at Harvard University, when she received the news that her cancer had returned.Uribe penned anopen letterin the Harvard Crimson on Sunday revealing that just days after hitting the “five-year mark from the end of treatment” in December, her longtime oncologist, Dr. De Angulo had tears in his eyes as he conducted a test.“Forty-eight hours and a bone marrow aspiration later, he confirmed that I had beaten the odds again — but this time, there were no bells or celebrations,” Uribe writes. “The leukemia that had been so unlikely to return was back with a vengeance, leading a military insurgency on my until-then-at-peace bone marrow. Ready to devour me from the inside out, just when I thought it never would.“The senior revealed she had spent much of the fall semester feeling exhausted, unmotivated, and sore. She struggled to attend class and get her work done, and to eat and sleep regularly. “I felt needles in my shoulder so sharp that I ground my teeth to dust, gulped down more painkillers than I care to admit, and ended up at the emergency room not once but twice,” she wrote.In hindsight, she can see it was more than just the stress of being a senior and president of theCrimson— the country’s oldest daily college newspaper, and a role shecalled"the absolute honor of a lifetime.“Now, she’s preparing to undergo chemotherapy treatment once again, and she describes the world feeling like a tease of all the things she can’t have. “It’s as if the world is taunting you, reminding you that it’s your last day of freedom before that life-saving poison exiles you to a dark room or a hospital bed, or generally anywhere near a receptacle to weather its harsh side effects.“As she once again faces a long health battle, she compares the feeling of starting chemo to that of shipping off to war, the feelings of undergoing the treatment as “life-crushing, life-sucking, life-suppressing.“She first battled leukemia at age 16, she writes, recalling missing out on the experiences of “sneaking out” to parties in high school, and watching her peers navigate where they’d spend the next four years of their lives, “shopping around for a future,” while she wondered whether she had four more years at all.One day, it all ended. She rang the “glorious bell that marked the end of treatment,” applied to college, attended Harvard, and lived her life. But she writes that she always felt she was “living on borrowed time.“Despite reaching the five-year mark where she was considered to be cancer-free permanently, her chances for relapse were “so statistically low” that she was “considered fully free of the disease,” Uribe’s winter break brought a new battle instead of a permanent cease-fire.Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.“I don’t have a neat conclusion to offer — no inspirational words, no promise that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ no certainty that after all of this, I’ll come out stronger on the other side,” she writes. “I was born on a day when God was sick. Maybe he was battling with himself, then, too.”
Raquel Coronell Uribe was ready for a relaxing break following a stressful fall semester at Harvard University, when she received the news that her cancer had returned.
Uribe penned anopen letterin the Harvard Crimson on Sunday revealing that just days after hitting the “five-year mark from the end of treatment” in December, her longtime oncologist, Dr. De Angulo had tears in his eyes as he conducted a test.
“Forty-eight hours and a bone marrow aspiration later, he confirmed that I had beaten the odds again — but this time, there were no bells or celebrations,” Uribe writes. “The leukemia that had been so unlikely to return was back with a vengeance, leading a military insurgency on my until-then-at-peace bone marrow. Ready to devour me from the inside out, just when I thought it never would.”
The senior revealed she had spent much of the fall semester feeling exhausted, unmotivated, and sore. She struggled to attend class and get her work done, and to eat and sleep regularly. “I felt needles in my shoulder so sharp that I ground my teeth to dust, gulped down more painkillers than I care to admit, and ended up at the emergency room not once but twice,” she wrote.
In hindsight, she can see it was more than just the stress of being a senior and president of theCrimson— the country’s oldest daily college newspaper, and a role shecalled"the absolute honor of a lifetime.”
Now, she’s preparing to undergo chemotherapy treatment once again, and she describes the world feeling like a tease of all the things she can’t have. “It’s as if the world is taunting you, reminding you that it’s your last day of freedom before that life-saving poison exiles you to a dark room or a hospital bed, or generally anywhere near a receptacle to weather its harsh side effects.”
As she once again faces a long health battle, she compares the feeling of starting chemo to that of shipping off to war, the feelings of undergoing the treatment as “life-crushing, life-sucking, life-suppressing.”
She first battled leukemia at age 16, she writes, recalling missing out on the experiences of “sneaking out” to parties in high school, and watching her peers navigate where they’d spend the next four years of their lives, “shopping around for a future,” while she wondered whether she had four more years at all.
One day, it all ended. She rang the “glorious bell that marked the end of treatment,” applied to college, attended Harvard, and lived her life. But she writes that she always felt she was “living on borrowed time.”
Despite reaching the five-year mark where she was considered to be cancer-free permanently, her chances for relapse were “so statistically low” that she was “considered fully free of the disease,” Uribe’s winter break brought a new battle instead of a permanent cease-fire.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“I don’t have a neat conclusion to offer — no inspirational words, no promise that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ no certainty that after all of this, I’ll come out stronger on the other side,” she writes. “I was born on a day when God was sick. Maybe he was battling with himself, then, too.”
source: people.com
