When Dr. Heavensent left the room, Mom and I sat in silence. I really didn't know what to say OR I'm sure I had a lot to say but I just didn't know if I should even say anything -- ever got that feeling? So anyway, we sat in silence. We didn't even ask Dr. Heavensent when they would start her first cycle of chemotherapy.
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At this point, I had NO IDEA what chemotherapy was all about. All I knew about it was it made my Lolo (Grandpa) bald and I was terrified by it. I was 4 years old when Lolo was battling his brain cancer. And my Mom and I would travel down to Manila on weekends to visit him in the hospital and I would not be allowed inside the hospital because I was too young, so when my Mom would go in, either one of my Aunts or Uncles would have to wait with me outside the hospital.
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We tried to go about the day as normal as possible. Pretending to watch re-runs of FRIENDS, read the papers, I even went to the cafe to grab some pastries, pasta and frapps for us to snack on. On my way up, I passed by this magazine stand and saw a magazine titled "The BIG C." I browsed thru it and saw that it had a lot of information regarding cancer, how it develops, the different treatments, articles on caregivers of cancer patients, etc. I decided to buy the magazine and I excitedly proceeded back to Mom's room. When I opened the door, I enthusiastically told Mom about the magazine and she excitedly flipped thru the pages of the magazine. Me, being too excited got the magazine from her and started reading page by page. In between my reading, I would read out loud some interesting cancer fact. Later on, after reading thru the magazine, I told Mom to read it too as it contained a lot of helpful information. And then that's when my Mom said "I don't want to." And I was like, why? It has a lot of interesting facts blah blah. And she just said " Because it makes me scared." I was being insensitive.
Later that night, I was lying on Mom's hospital bed and she was sitting on the chair, the nurse came in and informed Mom that she will have to start taking a couple more medicines. And we both asked the nurse what that was for. The nurse told us that it is a drug that will help decrease the nauseating feeling after chemotherapy. GREAT. Just what we wanted to hear. So I told the nurse that we were not yet informed about the start of the treatment and that we would want to hear all the details first before anything else. Yes I kinda snapped at the nurse, I guess I was already panicking by this time. After a few minutes, Mom's team of doctors came to our room. They were very apologetic about catching us off guard and they were sorry that they failed to talk to us first. So yeah. Mom and I asked all possible questions, like : When will the first chemotherapy session be? How will it be administered? How long will it take? What will she feel while having her chemo? What will be the arrangements for succeeding chemo sessions? What are the side effects? Will there be a restriction on her diet? Of course, I just had to ask this: When will her hair fall off? Gawd I don't know why but I was so worried about her hair falling off.
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So Dr. Bello (assistant of Dr. Heavensent) tried to answer all our questions. He is a very uptight man by the way, Mom and I just loved teasing him and joking him all the time. It drove us nuts just seeing him so tense and serious. So anyway, Dr. Bello said Mom will be having her first out of six chemo sessions the next day, it will be administered by IV and will take approximately 3-4 hours. There is no pain felt during the chemo itself, it'll just be like a normal IV dripping into your system. For the next chemo sessions, it will be possible for Mom to have her chemo in the ambulatory section, that is, she can come to the hospital and then leave right after her chemo session. Possible side effects would be loss of appetite, nausea, mouth sores, fatigue. There will be no restriction on her diet. As for the falling off of her hair, it will depend. Sometimes it falls off sometimes it doesn't. Dr. Bello also gave a brief background of the drugs that would be used. I pretended to understand it.
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So OK that was settled. First chemotherapy tomorrow.
As soon as Dr. Bello left the room, I told Mom that everything would be OK. And then we started to send text messages to all our relatives and friends asking for prayers. Mom then popped in the medicine the nurses gave her. I took this as a sign that she was ready for her chemo. In a way I guess. I told myself that I had to be ready too.
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I'm not sure if I was able to sleep well that night but I remember waking up early the next day. Mom and I had our breakfast and then I told her that it would be good if I washed her up early so that she would be ready early enough. So I washed her hair and gave her a sponge bath (since there was still an IV connected to her, a real bath wasn't possible yet and her wound from the tube inserted in her lung was still a bit fresh). After that, I took a bath and got ready. Today was the big day. While I was in the bathroom, so many thoughts were running thru my mind. I started to think about how things would have been if my Dad were still alive. Would my Dad be able to take all this stress and tension? Would he be able to stomach sitting in the hospital room watching Mom like this? Or would he have decided to just stay home and drown his sorrows in alcohol? Was it bad for me to be thinking that I thought it better that Dad "went ahead" so that he would not have to experience this?
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My Aunt then arrived. After a few minutes, my cousin came. Plus one of my Mom's friends, we called ourselves the hospital brigade. We would all be together in the hospital everyday since my Mom's confinement. Together we would laugh, drink coffee, read magazines and take pictures. We would have a party almost everyday. That was until Mom's first chemo session. We were all pretending it to be a normal "hospital" day but in truth and in fact we were all f**ki*ng scared. I slipped out of the room for a while and just let my tears fall. Man, what was this all about?
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When I got back in, Mom was already laying on the bed under her comfy blankies, holding her Bible. A few minutes after, Dr. Heavensent arrived, being her bubbly encouraging self, she sat beside Mom and held Mom's hand. "Mommy everything will be fine. We are going to make you well. The medicines will remove that ball in your lung don't worry, okay? And I will be checking in on you every 30minutes. Do not worry, relax. The Lord is in control." Mom just smiled. And the Dr. Heavensent sent for the nurses to prepare the taxotere and cisplatin. Here we go.
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The nurses came in with 2 glass bottles, they were not too big. The first one they were to administer would be the taxotere and then the cisplatin. One of the bottles had to covered in carbon paper to protect it from being exposed to any form of light, so even Mom's IV tube had to be covered. I know Mom was freaking out by this time because she wasn't saying anything anymore. My Aunt, my cousin and I just sat around Mom. And then the medicines started to drip. Slowly dripping into her body, spreading thru her veins, slowly making its way to her lungs. Every after 5 minutes I would ask Mom how she was feeling and she kept telling me that she didn't feel a thing, it felt like a normal IV medicine entering her body. The nurses would come in every now and then to ask her how she was doing. Dr. Heavensent came in and even sat with us for a good 1 hour. We told stories and asked questions about her. I so love that lady. And then Dr. Heavensent "Look Mommy, you're almost done with your 1st bottle, see how fast?" Dr. Heavensent left and said that she would be back.
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After a while, I sensed Mom to be relaxed already as she asked me to page Dr. Heavensent and ask if she could drink coffee. And then we all realized that since we were all so nervous, sacred and worried, everyone forgot about lunch. A lot more relaxed by this time, Mom asked me to go buy lunch. She sat up and said, "We might as well have a party." Party it is. I left the hospital and ran to take out some food. I returned with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni salad and brownies.
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In no time, both IV bottles were empty.
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