When Words Change a Family

Tse Dáá K’áán

I never imagined my family would go through something like this.

It started with my brother not feeling well. At first, we all thought it was just a cold. We told him to get some rest and figured he’d be back on his feet in a few days.

Instead, each day he became weaker.

His stomach started hurting. His legs began swelling. Soon his whole body ached, and before long he couldn’t even get out of bed.

Like many Diné men, he didn’t want to go to the hospital. He kept telling us he’d be alright and that he could get through it on his own.

After about a week, we knew something wasn’t right anymore. We called an ambulance.

That was the beginning of one of the hardest weeks our family has ever lived through.

At the hospital, doctors found what they believed was a black mass in his pelvic area. They told us it was likely cancer. The next day he was flown to Grand Junction, Colorado, to see cancer specialists.

Our world stopped.

One week earlier my brother had been walking around like anyone else. Now our family was hearing words like “Stage 4,” “metastatic bladder cancer,” and “it has spread to his lungs.”

No one could clearly explain what was happening, but those words were enough.

Fear took over.

We drove back and forth between New Mexico and Colorado, trying to stay by his side while also trying to understand what the doctors were telling us.

Then they handed us letters recommending that we have our home tested for radon and our community tested for uranium, arsenic, and benzene exposure.

That’s when everything became bigger than my brother.

We started asking ourselves questions that no family wants to ask.

If he was exposed… were we all exposed?

What about our children?

What about our neighbors?

A dark cloud settled over our family.

We were grieving someone who was still alive.

About a week later, the doctors came back with different news.

The black spots they believed were cancer weren’t cancer at all.

They were a severe infection.

Something that could be treated with antibiotics.

My brother had been misdiagnosed.

The doctors apologized, but by then our family had already lived through panic, grief, confusion, fear, and sleepless nights. Even though my brother was going to live, the emotional weight we carried didn’t disappear overnight.

That experience changed the way I see healthcare.

I realized that healing isn’t only about medicine. It’s also about communication. The words spoken by a doctor don’t stop with the patient, they travel through an entire family.

Sometimes those words stay with you long after the diagnosis has changed.

Joey Tsosie – Tse Dáá K’áán, July 2026