Give ‘Em Hell: Another Cancer Story

By Bethany Leo

Give ‘Em Hell is a funny-emotional story about Bethany Leo’s battle with cancer. It’s a hopeful book full of inspiration and hopefully helpful information. Bethany Leo tells her side her side of what going through cancer at 22 looks like.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728371481

Bethany Leo

Bethany Leo was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Academy of Culinary Arts in 2010. “Give ‘Em Hell” is her first piece of literature.

Book preview

© 2020 Bethany Leo. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

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expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7149-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7148-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020916192

Published by AuthorHouse 09/03/2020

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Contents

Chapter 1     It’s Probably Nothing

Chapter 2     What the Fuck Is Epipericardial Fat Necrosis?

Chapter 3     Is It a Boy or Girl?

Chapter 4     Ain’t Nothing but a Number

Chapter 5     Round 1—Ding, Ding!

Chapter 6     Round 2—Is It Over Yet?

Chapter 7     Gains and Losses

Chapter 8     Killing Me to Save My Life

Chapter 9     March and All Its Madness

Chapter 10   The Game

Chapter 11   The Fault in Our Stars

Chapter 12   My Mom’s Birthday

Chapter 13   Are You Sure?

Give ‘Em Hell

Note from the Author

Thank you for reading my book and being interested in my cancer story. Everything in this

story is from my perspective and my memory. There were conversations between my parents

and doctors that I was not a part of, so I had to recreate them as they were told to me. There

were people I met along my journey whom I wish I could have described and included in this

story, but to tell you the truth, I’m not a writer. I hope I still have your interest, and I hope

you enjoy my terrifying yet optimistic, sometimes pessimistic, roller coaster of a story.

CHAPTER 1

It’s Probably Nothing

M y name is Bethany Leo, and I spent a year of my life fighting to defy the odds. I hope this book gives help and hope to those navigating through their own adventures.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the City of Champions and the City of Bridges, the city whose three rivers converge at what we like to call the point. I was fortunate to be blessed with a big, loving family filled with cousins, aunts, and uncles galore. I was also the youngest of three daughters and the toughest of the three.

At an early age, I decided I want to be a chef. I spent every minute I could in the kitchen. When my sisters were asking for Eggos, I was asking to use the stove to make dippy eggs. My love for food and the kitchen grew in high school, when I had a chance to go to a vo-tech school for culinary arts, an old school with thousands of talented people who wanted to follow their dreams—just like me. It helped high school kids try out different professions that involved being hands-on so they could discover if they liked a profession before spending their lives hating what they did. I loved the feeling of walking in those doors every day knowing I was following my dream—that every step I took was on the right path. I had many inspirational teachers who believed in me to help guide me through my years there.

I rose through the ranks and graduated as class president and the president of our National Technical Honor Society in 2009. You could say I was the teacher’s pet. I enjoyed people liking me and enjoyed being a positive influence for my class. Some people called me an overachiever. Some people called me a natural-born leader. Some people just called me bossy. I personally think I’m all of the above. One thing I’ve never been called is a quitter. I tried many things and failed, but I never gave up. I developed a saying: You can’t learn from mistakes if you don’t make them. It helped to remind me that failing is okay, but when you fail, get back up and try again. If I wasn’t going to be a chef, I was going to end up an inspirational speaker. I could feel it in my bones. At this point in my story, I hope you are imagining me posing at the top of a mountain with an eagle soaring behind me.

All joking aside, I always wanted to be a person others could rely on, someone whom others would look up to or go to in times of need. It wasn’t to have the glory of saying, Yes, I did that. I helped someone. It was more along the lines of thinking that I may have inspired someone to help someone else. After a year in culinary school, I got the chance to choose an externship location. I was offered several positions across the East Coast. Many of my friends went down to Florida, others down to the Carolinas. I wanted to follow them to those places and start out somewhere where I knew others. Who wouldn’t? It was an intimidating experience altogether—being a nineteen-year-old girl in male-dominated kitchens and constantly being in danger of burning myself or cutting myself.

After weighing my options, I finally chose Nemacolin Woodlands Resort. I had a few friends who went there, and I wanted to be closer to home. The resort was a quick hour or two away from home and a great position to start my chef career off strong.

After a few months at the resort and the completion of my externship, I felt a little homesick and decided to move back to Pittsburgh. This city is one of a kind. It has old and new, community and excitement. Once I finished my externship and I completed all the credits I needed, I said goodbye to Nemacolin and hello to BRAVO Cucina Italiana. BRAVO was a chain of fine-dining restaurants. They pretended that the food was made fresh daily, but most of what we served came in frozen or from a can. It was easily one of the fastest kitchens I had ever worked in. They had an open-concept kitchen, which, in my opinion, was a horrible idea. If you’ve ever worked in a kitchen, you know the language that goes on. I’ve learned insulting swear words and phrases that you wouldn’t find in a dictionary. It was a great step in the right direction but not exactly what was best for me. Therefore, I started looking around for something a little less … dangerous.

I landed myself a job doing more than just being a chef. I started to work for a retirement community. It was exciting because, unlike restaurants, the kitchen closed at seven o’clock every night. No more late nights, no more busy weekends, a lot fewer drugs, and the best part was that it was more rewarding than just making food for families who didn’t feel like cooking that night. I felt I truly was making a difference in people’s lives. What I did at work was actually helping people. Yes, some of the residents complained that I couldn’t make spaghetti taste like theirs, for which they had spent forty years perfecting the recipe, or that the petite filet medallions were too hard for them to chew with their dentures. Those were some of the less exciting parts of serving the elderly community, but that’s what I was there for, to serve these people.

After a few months at this new job, I took over many of the management responsibilities. I had taken over most of my executive chef’s and food and beverage director’s duties, some of the ordering, some of the meetings, and a lot of the cooking. Every time I took on a new responsibility, it meant I would spend more time there. On average, I would spend almost seventy hours a week at the building. The joke was on my bosses, though. They were the ones who had to explain why I had thirty hours of overtime every week at the payroll meetings.

However, I enjoyed doing it; I was their yes-man. The downside to all this excitement was that I never got a raise or a new title for all the extra work I did. This wasn’t company policy, just something that my bosses were able to slide under the radar. I was just happy being the one everyone came to. I felt as if I was the boss. And I think my boss knew I was naive enough to do whatever he needed, with no additional rewards and no questions asked. So after a year of building up my reputation with this company and working as many hours as I could at the facility, it started to feel that it was taking a toll on my body.

In September of 2012, my twenty-second birthday was approaching. I was ready to celebrate and spend a night carelessly drinking with family and friends, just like any twentysomething would do. I planned to spend the night at a beach-themed bar. It was outdoors, most of the floor was covered in sand, there were grass huts where you and several friends could lounge, and the area was mostly lit with tiki torches. I swear they put coconut-scented diffusers somewhere; when the wind blew, you felt as if you were at the beach. It was quite a relaxing area to hang out and drink with friends.

I spent the day containing my excitement to celebrate recklessly with everyone. I tried to rush through work and get everything done as quickly as possible. As I was rushing to get out of work that day, I felt an ache in my hip. It was a deep ache in my right hip, deeper than an ache from a bruise. I pushed on it and moved my leg around to see if it needed cracking or something. But after a few minutes, it seemed to subside. I thought, Well, that’s strange. I figured it was nothing—must have hit my hip on something or stretched a little too far trying to rush out of work.

The workday continued—four hours down and four to go. For once, I was only working an eight-hour day. But there it was again. As I bent down to grab a milk crate off the ground, the ache returned. It came on quickly this time and lasted just a few seconds longer than the previous time. It was very uncomfortable and made me hesitant to move right away. It was like a charley horse. But just like last time, it subsided and I kept going. I