Freshman Josh Sadder said when he first found out that his grandmother had been diagnosed with breast cancer, he didn’t feel anything.

“I just sat there; I just thought about it,” Sadder said. “And then after a few hours passed I broke down. It finally hit me, like ‘this is real.’”

In order to show his love and support for his grandmother, Sadder decided to dedicate his third tattoo to her. The tattoo is a cancer ribbon outlined in pink and has the word “Fe,” or faith in Spanish, in his grandmother’s handwriting on one of the ribbon ends. He had it tattooed on his back at the end of last summer.

“I know it’s wrong for me to say this, but I was always her favorite grandchild because I was the oldest,” Sadder said, laughing.

Sadder, a biology major and pre-med student, said they were very close, especially after he spent nearly his entire eighth grade year living with her and his father in Colombia.

When she was diagnosed, Sadder’s grandmother was moved to Seattle for her treatments. Sadder’s father and his new wife, who was Colombian and spoke very little English, dropped everything to go with her.

Sadder said it was a very stressful time for his family. He spent most of his grandmother’s cancer in New Jersey with his mother, but he was able to visit her in Seattle for an entire summer.

“The chemo knocked all of my grandmother’s hair off, and when that happened I remember my dad called and he was crying,” Sadder said. “After my grandma’s hair fell out, it hit him that this was actually happening.”

When Sadder first revealed his tattoo to his grandmother, he was scared that she’d disapprove. His grandmother was quite religious and usually rejected all tattoos. With Sadder’s tattoo, however, her reaction surprised him.

“She actually started crying, she said ‘I love it’ when I showed it to her,” Sadder said. “That made me very happy.”

Sadder’s grandmother is now a cancer survivor, and is happy back living in Colombia. Although everything has gone back to normal, Sadder said that he checks up on her now a lot more than he did before.

Published on December 1, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact: emmichae@syr.edu