You Don't Look That Sick

There was one time when my dad and I were coming back from my regular pediatrician’s office when we stopped in at a toy store, just for fun. I found a tray of pretty rhinestone letters that could be slipped onto a bracelet to form whatever words you wanted. My dad agreed to let me buy the letters for my name – thankfully I had a short name! After carefully picking out the best 4 letters I could find, we went up to the cashier at her desk at the front of the store. Right there on the side of the desk was my picture with the Hope for Hope logo. It always amused and slightly embarrassed me to see where my friends put those posters. I hadn’t been expecting one in here.
My dad stepped up to pay and the cashier took the letters from my hand.
“Wait, ‘H-O-P-E’?” she said, examining the charms. "Your name is Hope?"
“Uh…yeah,” I replied, not sure where this was going.
“Are you Hope [Last Name]? That girl on the poster and in the local newspaper? That girl who made the t-shirts and everything?”
"Yeah," I said, feeling very weird. It's weird to be recognized, especially when you don't even completely know why you're being recognized - I mean, I have cancer. It's not exactly something I asked for or wanted to be known for.
“Huh," she said. "You don’t look that sick.”
WHAT? What the heck was that supposed to mean? Was she accusing me of pretending to be sicker than I really was? Did she WANT me to look sicker? Did she WANT me to stop trying? I could, you know. I could do all of that. I still can. I can stop bothering with the hats and wigs and makeup so that you can see how weird that looks, and I can stop buying shirts that cover all my grotesque surgery scars so that you have to look at them, and I can wear a sign around my neck that says, “I’m 15, not 10, even though I look it because cancer stopped my regular growth cycles” so that you don’t keep treating me like a little kiddie and then feel shocked when I say something intelligent, and I can stop being polite and start complaining about every single thing in my body that hurts, because there’s always something, every day, so you can feel awkward and I can give up my regular life of being a teenager and just stay in the hospital all day so that you can make quilts for me, and I can stop worrying about going out when I feel sick and just throw up all over your floor so that you have to clean it up SO THAT I LOOK SICK. How’s that?
But instead of saying all of this like I wanted to, I just looked up at her, smiled, and said, “Why thank you. That has to be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
And then I walked out of there with my dad, without throwing up once.