YA Fiction

Picture yourself staying home with your teenage daughter on a rainy day. What would you do? I knew I have to figure out the answer myself, as my wife is out of town. I decided to borrow the fiction book The Fault in Our Stars from my daughter, and watched the film adaptation together. Pretty sweet torture, right? It is. 

I read the story of Hazel Grace Lancaster who suffered from thyroid cancer spreading to her lungs. The cancer treatment gave her ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks; the satellite colony in her lungs made her carry cylinders of oxygen weighing a few pounds. That sucks. Totally.

When Hazel was told, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicked in and she figured that’s one in five … so she looked around the cancer support group and thought: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.

It’s disheartening.

Issac was another patient within the cancer support group. He had retinoblastoma. To keep him alive, he had to have his eyes taken out. This is what hell would be like, his whole life without light. He told his surgeon that he’d rather be deaf than blind. If and only if he had the choice. Issac was, unfortunately, left with the only choice, according to his cancer surgeon, that eye cancer wasn’t going to make him deaf. 

Next, there is the story of Augustus walking with a prosthetic leg after osteosarcoma treatment, losing ground sometimes. He was the best friend of Hazel and Issac. Augustus had to learn driving left-footed, and failed the driving test three times. He passed in his fourth driving test, probably thanks to something called cancer perks. That refers to the little things cancer kids get that regular kids don’t: free passes on late homework, basketballs signed by sports heroes, and unearned driver’s licenses.

I admit – this is a fiction written for teenagers. But as it turns out, the story breaks the heart of adults too.