This upcoming January, Bryant Choirs will hold their annual Coffeehouse Cabaret; an event that junior choir member, Chris Garza, realized he would not be able to attend when his doctors told him that he would have to be isolated for chemotherapy. With only three weeks left before his isolation would begin, Garza knew that he would be homebound long before the January event. 

“Since I’m starting chemo, my immune system is going to be garbage. So any disease will basically be enough to kill me, and I’ll have to be isolated from like, society,” Garza said. 

Chemotherapy works by using powerful chemicals to kill fast-growing cells within the body. There are many types of chemotherapy, but all of them have side effects, which include anything from nausea and vomiting, to hair loss and easy bruising. It can also lead to a decrease in neutrophils, a certain type of white blood cell in the body, making it more difficult to fight infections. 

Garza has had to go through chemotherapy before, because this isn’t the first time he’s fought cancer. Garza has dealt with two types of brain cancer in his lifetime; Burkitt lymphoma, a cancer that required doctors to remove Garza’s tonsils, and currently, medulloblastoma, which can develop after experiencing an extreme head injury at a young age. 

“I remember that I fell back and hit my head on the back of a trailer. And then yeah, it gashed my head open in the exact area where my scar is,” Garza said. 

Because his impending isolation will get in the way of his participation in the Coffeehouse Cabaret, Garza took things into his own hands and created his own cabaret by having classmates sign a petition. 

“I was kind of scared to ask Mr. [Oglesby], so instead of asking, I made a petition first. Then the next day, I gave him the petition and he agreed to do it,” Garza said. 

Chris’s event, called the Chris Cabaret, was held Wednesday, September 28 at Love Auditorium. The event was MC’d by Garza himself, as performers Bianca Euler, Tyler Phillips, Bee Golleher and many others sang songs that ranged from heart-touching to theatrical. 

Garza explained that his high school experience for the last two years has been unexpectedly positive, and that the part that has hurt the most about leaving has been having to say goodbye to new friends. 

“I honestly expected that I would be too awkward to actually make any friends and that I’d just be a guy on the sidelines. But now I’ve kind of become the center stage. Like, I learned to be outgoing with people, and basically, being here kind of changed me as a person. In a good way,” Garza said.