Jerris Marr (JM) and Faith Marr (FM):
JM: From the very first surgery when I walked into that ICU, it really, really shocked me. You were so swollen up and you had a lot of tubes connected to you. I didn’t think it was you, and it just was really, really hard to see my baby like that.
FM: Yeah.
JM: I hated that you were in the hospital and it was incredibly painful for you.
FM: I couldn’t even sit up it was so painful.
JM: That’s right. But then at the same point, there was a lot of good in it because I got to spend so much time with you.
FM: I remember we would get tattoo pens from the gift shop. You would like, draw a little bumblebee on me and a little rose because that’s my favorite flower.
JM: Yep. From your sternum down to your pelvic bone, you had a pretty good scar, and so we’d make that into the stem of a flower. And then to the left of that is a scar from your feeding tube during chemo.
FM: I call it my second bellybutton.
JM: That’s right, and we would turn that one into a butterfly.
FM: And you promised on my eighteenth birthday we would go get a tattoo together.
JM: Mmm hmm. What do you feel that you’ve learned from cancer?
FM: I think I learned that you don’t always have to keep like, your tears in and you just got to believe that you can do this. It’s turned me into a mini-adult.
And my friend, he had brain cancer and I went up to him and I’m like, I know you’re scared but the doctors told me that I won’t live too and you’ve got to believe that you can make it. And he just started crying and he hugged me, and his grandma came up and she hugs hard. [Laughs]
So dad, how do you think I handled this happening to me?
JM: You’re an amazing person. And it’s going to be exciting for me to watch you continue to grow and develop into a young lady because your maturity has done nothing but inspire me to be a better person. And the strength that you demonstrated through so many of your procedures gave me the energy to be strong there for you.
FM: Do you still worry about me?
JM: Every day, every minute. But I’m not worried about this cancer coming back anymore because you’ve kicked its butt.
FM: Yeah.
JM: You’ve beat it.