Up, Down and All Around

Celebrating a Milestone

Tonight, family and friends gathered together at one of our favorite restaurants for a simple Thanksgiving Dinner to mark the end of my mother's agonizing 16 weeks of chemotherapy.

She spent a few minutes at the start of the evening expressing her gratitude to the Almighty, and to those who were present for their unwavering support, encouragement, and prayers over the past few months. The mood was equally loving and festive.

When I mentally review the weeks that have passed, I am amazed at how the family has collectively weathered this challenge and emerged from it more tightly knit, more attuned to each other's needs, more tolerant of each other's quirks, and more confident in the strength of our family ties.

I also find myself in awe of my mom. She endured so much in the past few months: depression, rage, self-pity, loss of appetite, gut-wrenching nausea, severe weight loss, muscle weakness, bone pain, loss of sensation in her hands and feet, and hair loss... just to name a few. There were many days when she just wanted to curl up into a ball and die, and it was heartbreaking for us to see the way she was, and not be able to do anything to help her.

I am so proud of my dad. He received the main brunt of my mom's emotional outbursts, but he would just grin and bear it. He'd make sure my mom was taking the correct medication each day; he'd log her blood test results religiously; he'd call her from work every few hours to check if she'd eaten anything; and he basically pampered her to death. He also did a splendid job of hiding from us just how scared and worried he was... I only found out recently that he had developed a bleeding ulcer from the stress and worry.

There were many nail-biting periods in the past few months when no amount of medication could raise her blood count back to normal. There was one particularly bad 6-day period when we couldn't help but wonder if the chemotherapy had managed to destroy her bone marrow and obliterate her immune system, leaving her susceptible to the simplest of infections.

It didn't help when I learned that just a week prior, one of my friends lost his mother to an infection that she contracted during her first round of chemo -- her white blood count had dropped too low, and a simple cold deteriorated into pneumonia, and led to her death. Words were not adequate to express the sweet wave of relief that we all felt when my mom's blood test results finally started to improve.

I now understand, in restrospect, why there were so many days when I just felt sluggish, under the weather, or quite simply not in the mood. It is especially frustrating to find yourself unable to sleep properly night after night, despite the fact that you're dead tired.

On the other hand, this experience also managed to amplify every little bit of good news, and it's so easy to be happy when the people around you are having a good day.

Through it all, this blog has been a good companion; blogging has allowed me to come to terms with my own thoughts and feelings these past few months. I feel that I have come to a much better understanding of myself, simply from skimming through the entries that I made while wrestling with my fears, hopes, and worries.

The journey isn't over, but the worst has passed. I thank and praise our good Lord for His enduring mercy and grace. I count on His promise to never forsake us as we leave chemo behind and enter the last stage of treatment.

Finally... a heartfelt thank you to you, my two readers, for bearing with my cryptic entries, and for caring enough to read this entry all the way to the end.

Tags: Personal

Posted by CF at 11:55 PM