jes?s faces death with faith & bravado | atolemdro

01/23/13 ? cancer, inspiration, death, family, faith, people, loss, surgery, tumor, articles

meet jes?s?garcia, a young man from cali who is approaching his 4th brain surgery since the age of 13. ?the teenager let the latimes cover his trying experience so, in his words,??other dudes with cancer would know that everything would be OK.? ?read the newspaper?s feature on him below, beautifully written by?thomas curwen. ?at the end of it, you?ll find a?photo gallery?which shares more of?jes?s?s story through?arkasha?stevenson?s lens:

Jes?s Garc?a saw no reason to be afraid of death.

?It?s not good to fear anything,? he once said. ?Death is always around, but you?ve got to laugh at death.?

After leaving the hospital that afternoon in early May, he boarded the bus at Vermont and Sunset and headed south. The shops and congestion of Koreatown streamed by.

He didn?t bother calling his mother. She was in Idaho and would get the news soon enough. Besides, she would only start to cry, which was more than he could deal with. He turned off his phone to avoid any calls. He just wanted to hang out with friends, smoke some weed and play video games.

The bus stopped at Pico Boulevard, and he made his transfer. He was feeling better than he had in the morning when he was dizzy and had thrown up.

Jes?s had just turned 19 and had hopes for himself. He held his chin high, had a straight-ahead gaze and dressed carefully, coordinating black baggy shorts with a black and white T-shirt, a gray and white hoodie and white?Converse sneakers with red stripes. A Yankees cap covered a scar that stretched from his forehead to above his right ear.

He got off the bus at 5th Avenue in Arlington Heights and walked up the street. He found his friends hanging out in the back bedroom of their apartment. He didn?t share details of his visit to the hospital, and they didn?t ask.

The week before he had received an?MRI, and the doctor had just given him the results. The tumor in Jes?s? brain was larger now and had been bleeding. Jes?s wasn?t discouraged. He had faith in his doctors.

Since his first seizure eight years ago, he had had three operations, the last in September 2011. There had also been radiation treatments and?chemotherapy. Jes?s thought he was doing fine.

He was going to get his GED and get a job to help support his mother. He even thought about being a cop; only he?d go after the hard-core gangsters and not harass the kids on the block.

He loved his family and was loyal to his friends. He had no intention of leaving any of them or making a plan for his final days. Leave that for someone older, for someone who had more money, more opportunities.

For Jes?s, the world was just coming into focus, and no matter how difficult the treatments or debilitating their effect, he was determined to live.

Everything is fine, he said to his mother over the phone that night. Don?t worry.

Home was a converted two-car garage in the neighborhood of Exposition Park in South Los Angeles, where the streets were narrow and the houses small and tidy. The entrance was off a cul-de-sac, long in need of paving.

Jes?s and his family had moved four times in the last seven years. Once their apartment burned down; once a relative threw them out.

Another time their landlord accused Jes?s of being in a gang and they had to leave, and their most recent apartment was infested with bedbugs.

Last December, his mother, Valentina Gonz?lez, left for Idaho to visit a friend and decided to stay when she found a cheaper place to live and a better job for her boyfriend.

When Jes?s learned in February that the garage was available, he and his sister Jessica, 22, moved in. Another sister, Claudia, 23, eventually joined them, bringing her 2-year-old daughter, Itzel.

They paid $750 in rent, about what Jes?s received in disability each month. The rest of the family?s monthly income ? about $1,400 ? came from child support, unemployment insurance, welfare and whatever relatives could send them.

The garage?s owner was a family friend who tried to make the two rooms comfortable. He laid down carpet in the back room. Jes?s and his sisters could keep the cockroaches away, but they had to put up with the rats that came out at night.

Above the door, Jes?s placed a memorial to St. Jude. There were family photos on one wall, and in the back room, they hung a small print with verses from Isaiah.??Confiad en Jehov? perpetuamente.??Trust in the Lord always.

In mid-May, Jes?s was prescribed a steroid that controlled swelling and made him feel more comfortable.

He was also beginning a new type of chemotherapy; his doctor was unwilling to give up. The drugs and the treatment were enough to blur the line between hope and denial, and the summer started to feel normal.

Valentina, 39, had returned to Los Angeles by then, and moved in to care for her son. She had brought her youngest children, Jocelyn, 3, and Stuart, 15 months. Jes?s was her oldest boy, the one she called??Perro??? dog ? an affectionate nickname from the time when he was little and wouldn?t leave her side.

He was 6 when his father left the family. Jes?s idolized the man whose temper often turned violent when he drank.

On Wednesdays, Jes?s and Valentina rode the Expo Line and the bus to Children?s Hospital Los Angeles for tests. He would put in his earbuds and listen to his favorite bands: South Park Mexican, Kartel de las Calles, Cypress Hill.

Appointments were in the early afternoon, and before heading inside, they would buy a burrito from one of the food trucks parked on the street. He could never get enough to eat, one of the steroid?s side effects.

He was 13 when a brain scan revealed a lesion in his right temporal lobe, too small to worry about, but then came more headaches and seizures.

Almost three years later, he had his first surgery. Six months after that, he needed another operation. What had been diagnosed as a low-grade, non-aggressive tumor had become malignant.

As Jes?s lay in the hospital, he saw other children who were sicker than he was. He started to think about his life and how he was messing up.

He bullied his sisters. He ran away from his mom. He got into fights at school. For a while, he hung out with a tagging crew. He said that the police had cited him four times for carrying weed, a lighter and rolling papers.

?I had these demons in my head,? he said earlier this year, ?and I then realized I was lucky not to have it as bad as other kids in the hospital.?

By July, the tumor had spread throughout the right side of his brain and had begun to press against the left. The doctors, looking for a miracle, proposed a fourth surgery.

?No quiero que lloren.??No crying, he told his family when they gathered to view his most recent MRI.

Jes?s was well known in the?cancer?clinic, and when a friend there learned that he was a fan of Ramon Ayala, she made arrangements for him to meet the King of the Accordion at a concert at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal CityWalk.

Early in the set, Ayala dedicated a song to Jes?s, a ballad called ?Que me Entierren Cantando.?

?Nothing matters to me if one day I die,? Ayala sang in Spanish, ?only that they bury me singing.?

The song?s carefree spirit had always appealed to Jes?s, and he tried to live that way, even if it meant ignoring the truth.

If he felt weak, he said he just needed to lift some weights. If he felt pain, it was because he slept wrong. If he stumbled, it was his shoes, and if his family annoyed him, it wasn?t because the steroid made him irritable. It was because they were lazy.

One afternoon, a therapist from a hospice, Trinity Kids Care, stopped by, and helped the family make a poster using paint spread on the palms of their hands. When they were done, Jes?s wrote his name on the drop cloth as other patients had.

?Faith + Hope Everything is possible,? he added.

He wanted to believe that his life could help others, and he was eager to share what he had learned in the course of being sick. His message was simple. ?You can always change,? he said. ?You always have to have faith ? and love your family.?

Even after learning the risks of another surgery ? paralysis, blindness ? Jes?s didn?t believe it possible that he would lose his independence.

?That?s not even one-half percent in my head, not even the slightest decibel. Everything is going to be good,? he said. ?Positive. I?ll give it to you in Spanish.?Positivo.?

The operation lasted seven hours. Afterward the ICU nurse asked him where he was. Even in the haze of anesthesia, Jes?s made a joke.

?Seis Banderas,??he said. Six Flags.

She laughed. ?You have to say it in English.?

?You want it in Chinese?? he asked.

On Sept. 27, Jes?s came home to the garage. It had been five weeks since the surgery, and he was excited to be out of the hospital. He had grown bored with physical therapy.

A neighbor greeted him at the van and helped push his wheelchair over the hard-packed dirt in the backyard, which was crisscrossed with clotheslines and crowded with a dusty accumulation of toys, tools, tables, recyclables, tires, bicycles and motorcycles.

They lifted him over the unfinished threshold. Afternoon sunlight angled through the door. Water was running in the kitchen sink where Jocelyn was being bathed. Claudia had rearranged the back room for the hospital bed.

Tired from his day, Jes?s had no strength to stand. The neighbor and Valentina got him to his feet and into bed. The windowless room still held the heat of the day.

No one had told him why he had been discharged. No one said that the tumor had grown back and all options had been exhausted. One nurse wondered if he knew. Another believed his doctor should tell him; the doctor left that decision to Valentina.

It was clear to everyone who saw him that Jes?s had no short-term memory, and the news would be needlessly distressing.

Sleeping during the day, waking at night, he lost track of time, and his world became a blend of memories, dreams and reality. He listened to the singing birds from the movie ?Rio,? as the children danced on the bed beside him. He felt Stuart shake the rails of his bed, heard Claudia scold Itzel, who started to cry, and he smelled tortillas crisping on the stove.

Valentina fixed whatever he wanted ? chicken mole, alb?ndigas, pupusas, empanadas, caldo de res?? and there was always ice cream and cookies.

Valentina and Claudia puzzled over his shaky voice and the strange things he said. Once he saw the devil standing among the plaid hoodies at the foot of the bed. Another time he thought his feet and hands had changed places. The hospice tried to help with medications.

In spite of his helplessness, his mother and sister still recognized his bravura. His face ? his handsome features, the angular jaw, full lips, long eyelashes ? had grown swollen from the steroid, the skin marked with acne, but he still seemed happy and made jokes that doubled them over.

One October night as the Santa Ana winds were blowing, the pastor from their church stopped by. It was close to midnight. He often kept late hours, and the garage had become one of the regular stops for the church?s prayer group. Tonight he came alone.

His hard soles echoed on the linoleum floor as he walked through the front room. He laid his Bible on the bed and poured olive oil into his palm and placed the hand on Jes?s? forehead.

He wept and prayed, the cadence of each sentence matching the length of each breath, as he dispelled the goblin-like demons ??como un tipo de duendes?? that he found in the room and asked for a fence of angels ??un vallado de ?ngeles?? to be placed around the family.

When he was finished, the garage was silent but for the whirring of the ceiling fan.

Jes?s lay with his eyes closed. Valentina rubbed a hand through his hair.

Two weeks later, Jes?s had his first seizure in many months.

He had stopped getting out of bed. His brain was shutting down.

A few days before, he smiled at the memory of a girl he once knew and at the time he played second base for his Little League team. He wondered out loud about all the other girlfriends he could have had and all that he could have done in his life.

Breathing became difficult. His lungs and his chest labored as if he were drawing air through a wet cloth, and he stopped eating.

The names of two funeral homes were stuck on the refrigerator. A charity promised to pay for cremation and a memorial. Jes?s had once told Jessica that he wanted his ashes to be scattered at sea, and he wanted some marijuana to be thrown in as well.

?It?s me and Mary Jane all the way to the end,? she recalled him saying.

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the pastor and the prayer group gathered around his bed and filled the room with their voices, raising their dissonant prayers to God.

That night his color deepened. Claudia called the pastor back, and Jes?s? uncle, Ram?n Gonz?lez, stopped by. In the absence of his father, Jes?s had often turned to Ram?n for guidance and support.

?Chiquillo,? Valentina heard Ram?n say, ?estoy aqu?, mijo. Te quiero mucho.? I love you very much.

As Jes?s reached out for his uncle, Valentina counted three gasps, and then her son was still. She began to wail.

Friends and other family members soon arrived, and Valentina stayed with her son.

Through her tears, she stroked his hair, cupped his jaw with her hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if memorizing each feature by her touch.

The blood had drained from his face, and his cheeks and neck were no longer swollen. She thought he looked beautiful again, lying beneath a white blanket, his eyes closed, his jaw tied shut with a flowered sash.

Jes?s was once asked if 19 is too young to die. ?It?s never too early, and it?s never too late,? he said. ?Everyone?s life is borrowed.?

photos via framework?(click on the pics for a closer look + captions):

The night before his fourth brain surgery, Jesus Garcia sits outside his home- a two car garage converted into an apartment in which he lives with his mother, three sisters, brother, and niece. Jesus was told by his doctor that the surgery could possibly leave him paralyzed or blind. He was also informed that there was a possibility that Jesus would not wake up from the surgery at all. Either way, the tumor would not be completely removed. This would only buy Jesus some time.

Peering out the bus window, Jesus Garcia, 19, travels home after receiving chemotherapy at Children?s Hospital Los Angeles. It was first found in 2006 that Jesus had a calcification in his right temporal lobe. Even after four surgeries taking place between 2009 and 2012; the tumor continued to grow.

Left to right: Valentina Gonzalez, 39, checks the stove as her granddaughter Itzel, 2, waits for her bath as her aunt, Jessica Garcia, 21, and her mother, Claudia Garcia, 23, wash Valentina?s son, Stuart, 1, in the kitchen sink. The family all lives in a two car garage converted into a one bedroom apartment. While their two beds can not accommodate them all, Claudia is used to sleeping on the floor with her daughter, Itzel.

Still well enough to leave the house, Jes?s Garcia, 19, reaches out to his niece Izel, 2, as she is held by his sister, Claudia Garcia, while attending church at Iglesia Penecostes Maranatha in Los Angeles. As the tumor in the right hemisphere of Jes?s?s brain continued to grow, his left side became weaker and weaker making it difficult for him to go out.

A week before his fourth brain surgery, Jesus Garcia, right, talks to Children?s Hospital nurse care manager, Barbara Britt. As Jesus?s steroid intake increases, so does his agitations with his family. Britt explains to him that with this upcoming surgery, he is going to need his family around him.

Quietly lost in their anxieties, Jes?s Garcia, 19, waits with his mother, Valentina Gonzalez, in pre-op at Children?s Hospital Los Angles before his fourth brain surgery. While the surgery could leave Jesus blind, paralyzed, or worse, surgeons hoped that removing part of the tumor could afford Jesus an extra few months of life. However, only a month after the seven hour brain surgery, an MRI revealed significant regrowth of the tumor. Jes?s died at home three months after the surgery.

In the last moments before surgery, Valentina Gonzales kisses her son Jesus Garcia, 19, goodbye. Groggy from the anesthesia, Jesus is still clutching the teddy bear given to him by a nurse. The surgery lasted seven hours. Only a small amount of the tumor was removed and within a month after the surgery, the tumor had grown back.

After anxiously waiting for over seven hours for her son Jes?s Garc?a, 19, to emerge from brain surgery safely, Valentina Gonzalez takes in a deep breath. Before undergoing his fourth brain surgery to reduce the size of a tumor, Jes?s was told that there was a possibility that he could not make it out of the surgery. While doctors were able to remove part of the tumor, it had grown back within a month.

After his fourth brain surgery, Jesus Garcia, 19, is left with a massive scar zig-zagging across the right side of his scalp. Jesus recalled ?feeling like a monster? because of his scar from his initial surgeries. ?They told me this one would be bigger.?

With the help of Ricardo Ruiz, Valentina Gonzalez is able to transfer her son Jes?s Garcia, 19, to a wheelchair with a head support. Valentina and Claudia try to take him outside as much as they can. However, as Jes?s?s body deteriorated this became harder and harder.

Two days before his death the sound of Jes?s Garcia?s heavy breathing fills the room as his sister, Claudia Garcia, 23, strokes his face at their home in South Los Angeles. After four brain surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy, surgeons could not contain a tumor growing in the right hemisphere of Jes?s?s brain.

Valentina Gonzalez, 39, holds up her son Jes?s Garcia, 19, before helping him to the bathroom. After surgery, Jes?s?s left side began to deteriorate rapidly. Nearly two months after Jes?s returned home from the hospital, he was completely bed bound.

Tears stream from Valentina Gonzalez?s face while she strokes the face of her dying son, Jes?s Garcia. After four brain surgeries, doctors were unable to contain a tumor growing in the right hemisphere of Jesus?s brain. After enduring a seizure days earlier, Jes?s?s condition made a turn for the worst leaving Valentina holding vigil by his bedside late into the night.

Jes?s Garcia, 19, is surrounded by the a prayer group from Iglesia Pentecostes Maranatha. His mother weeps by his right shoulder and his sister Claudia holds his atrophied legs as she prays. Jes?s is suffering from a tumor in the right hemisphere of his brian and as his condition worsened the prayer group would make regular visits. While the group?s moans and prayers echoed throughout the two room apartment, Jes?s seemed to be unaware of their presence. He died four days later.

Fatigue overcomes Valentina Gonzales as she holds vigil over her son Jesus Garcia, 19, and tends to her other son Stuart, 1, (right) and her granddaughter Izel, 2 (left). Jesus is suffering from a tumor in the right hemisphere of his brian and is bedridden. Earlier in the night Jesus? condition had worsened and he would occasionally stop breathing. For the rest of the night, Valentina and Claudia stayed by his bedside to monitor his breath.

Valentina Gonzales collapses beside the bed where her dead son lies. Jesus Garcia, 19, died the night before, however his mother and sisters Jessica and Claudia were not ready to part with his body. Valentina covered his body with a blanket so ?he wouldn?t get cold.? She took a sash from Jesus? sister Claudia?s church dress. Tying the floral sash around his head, she was able to keep his jaw closed until rigomortis set in. The family held vigil over Jesus through the night until the body was taken away the next afternoon.

After holding vigil over her brother?s lifeless body all night long, Claudia Garcia, 23, breaks down as Jesus? body is taken away. She is comforted by her friend Kimberly Barrios, left.

A bible rests on Jes?s Garcia?s deathbed days after his death. After being bedridden for two months, 19-year-old Jes?s Garcia died at home after years of battling with a brain tumor.

Source: http://atolemdro.com/2013/01/23/jesus-death-faith/

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