Mariana

While growing up and until recent, I always considered myself lucky to not have had little siblings. I’m sure I was annoying to my big brother on many occasion, and most of my friends with younger siblings hated them growing up.

Clearly now I see things differently. I may not have a blood sister, but Mariana has become the closest to a little sister I have. I met Mariana a little over 4 years ago, and she was only 12 then. Mariana at the time was in recovery from chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. While her hair had already grown back to shoulder length, she had lost it completely during the worst of her chemo.

Unfortunately the doctors had to remove one of her ovaries, leaving her with only one at present.

To most everyone, even people who know a few things about medicine, this is quite unusual to find such a cancer in such a young girl. As far as her family knows, it doesn’t run in the family either. Her mother Alicia, has three other children, all older than Mariana. She is the baby of the family, and no one else, supposedly, ever gets sick.

Now as fiesty and fiery as ever, Mariana sometimes gets that little, baby sister attitude where she stomps her feet on the ground and says “mammiiii”. I give her the hardest time about that. She’s 16, and still usually gets her way.

While cancer at such a young age would be extremely difficult for most, this family lives in a poor village in Honduras, where medical expertise is not the best. At the time some people who knew Mariana and her family were working on getting her a passport and papers finalized to bring her to the states to have her chemo done there, but this process can be years, and Mariana finished her chemo before the process was truly complete.

Now going back for regular check-ups, it is really up in the air if Mariana will be able to have children one day. At the moment this isn’t a huge concern for Mariana, but I know one day it will most likely be extremely difficult to deal with. Although this makes for a difficult childhood/teenage years, this is not the only hardship this family has seen.

Mariana’s mother is currently married to the stepfather in the family. Her first husband is the father of all four children, but unfortunately has not been present since she was very little. While the information I’ve been told is sporadic, I am for sure that he is currently in prison. He has been in and out a few times, but as of this past month, they have sentenced him to 15 more years. As I have been told, he is a famous Honduran drug-lord. Supposedly known all over Central America, these are pretty much the only details I know about their father.


Luckily the stepfather is great, and Alicia is an extremely strong, independent woman. Considering what the family has dealt with in the past twenty years, its pretty incredible they all turned out the way they have. A really strong, tight-knit family who have rapidly become a second family to me down here. This last picture is of Mariana and her older brother, Junior, taken 3 springs break past. This past weekend Mariana and I discussed our favorite Beyonce and Katy Perry songs, since she's a big fan as well. If God never intended for me to have a blood sister, Mariana is surely the closest thing I have to a little sister in this world.