Tag Archives: cancer

Hiatus – Day 4

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…Sombre Thoughts…

We rose early, drove thru the rain, caught a ferry, and found ourselves at the hospital. Perhaps I’d been keeping the idea at arms length, to deny the truth of it, but as the elevator doors opened and we saw their familiar faces, the truth came crashing to the forefront of my world: She is sick, really sick…

At some point in my twenties, I think I just stopped. Stopped growing, stopped progressing, stopped moving forward in my life. I still run to my parents when my heart is broken. I still call my dad when there is something wrong with my car. I still have boxes of childhood things hidden somewhere in my parent’s garage. I’m not grown up yet, I can’t be. I don’t have friends whos parents are dead of semi-natural causes. I didn’t graduate with a small town guy whos dance group nearly won America’s Got Talent. Our closest family friend’s oldest daughter isn’t currently fighting a rare and aggressive form of cancer for her life…

We hug, and smile, and are happy for the familiar faces. Yesterday was a bad day, and at this point, they are simply getting thru each day. Unsure of what tomorrow will bring, or the day after, or when life eventually calls them back home. Who wakes up with a game plan for this sort of thing? We decide to go get pizza for lunch. 

I am not sure if I am quiet because I am tired, or if it is because I am unsure of what to say. I can admittedly lecture others on the sorts of things to think and say in this sort of situation, but I can’t find the words myself. How do you talk with someone whos world right now is this fight, without bringing up the idea of death? How do you talk with someone whos world right now is unknown, without seeming aloof? How do you ignore the topic of pain and fear, without ignoring the actual pain and fear? The ironic thing is, this is my job. I am strong every single day for my patients, and especially for their loved ones. “What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to go home and sleep tonight?” Fear and pain in their eyes. And I will nod, place a hand gently on their shoulder or back, and say, “take care of yourself. Rest assured that your loved one is where they need to be right now. In the hands of people who are watching, and caring, and going to keep them safe. Take care of yourself, so that when you come back tomorrow, you are strong for them.”

But none of that comes to my mind as we awkwardly stand outside her room. Or once we are in her room. Or even once we’d left… I don’t realize I am holding my breath. Holding it as we ride down the elevator, holding it as we drive back to the ferry, holding it as we arrive back home, the sun still shining. It isn’t until the front door closes behind us that I release my breath and with it my tension. How do I begin to make sense of this reality?

Hiatus – Day 3.5

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I.R.L…

I don’t know if this ever happens to anyone else, but often times, without rhyme or reason, a movie will fall into my lap that speaks so entirely well to my life at that moment.

For instance, I had gone by myself to see the film Lion, staring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman. A film about a young man trying to come to terms with his own adoption. Him dealing with the isolation his feelings bring him. Feelings that people can sympathize with, but will never truly be able to understand. And his need to find his birth mother. At that time in my life, almost exactly, I had begun to feel the same way about my own adoption..

Today, my mother and I went to see the film The Big Sick, staring Kumail Nanjiani. Intended as a comedy, but we both knew it had some serious themes. 

If you haven’t seen it (and you should) be prepared for spoilers..

Nanjiani, a Pakistani-American battles the traditions and expectations of his family, and his feelings for an all American girl. She becomes terminally ill, and he is thrown headlong into her life, when her parents arrive. But where this movie struck home was, the aggressive nature of her illness. She goes to the E.R. for simply passing out, and shortly there-after she is put into a medically induced coma. Her infection, unknown in nature, quickly travels from her lungs, to her kidneys, and then to her heart. It is terrifying in its swiftness…

Tomorrow, my parents and I had plans to take the day, to travel across the channel, and visit some family friends. Old family friends from when I was a child. One daughter, my age, the other, just a couple years older, and currently battling extremely rare, extremely aggressive cancer..

You see these things all the time, in movies, on tv, and you always think, “these kinds of things don’t happen to people like us.” And then they do… and here we are…