The beast gnawing mercilessly my loved one for the past year now has finally been exposed. It has a fancy name meant to scare you and hold you in fear: Hodgkins t cell histiocyte rich large b cell lymphoma. This is the third time it has dared attack my loves ones and won the last two battles. This battle is mine to win. The last two times it kept us in such dread that we were terrorised to called it by its name. The C word was banned in my home, the same home I sit in today in the early morning and write these words. But this time I named it before anyone could give me medical spiel. TO me he is ZOZO. This t cell and b cell saga will not instill the alarm and panic it did last time. If you google it you find a load of scientific mumbo jumbo that means nothing to the layperson and is again meant to terrorise you. Actually the whole C Saga (cancer) seems to have been created to enrich the medical fraternity by giving it a larger than life image. When you patiently crawl and sift through all the information you get, you find that it has a fairly good chance of cure. Sorry I hate the word remission. I will hold on to cure.
However I want the control of the cure to be in my hands and blissfully my family doc will hold my hand and avoid I fall into the traps commercial medicine will lay for me along the way. In addition to what I feel is adequate and humane, I will draw strength from the age old medical traditions that have been so brutally and contemptuously been cast aside by those who think they know all. I will also starve the beast with all the foods it hates. I will go to the end of the world and farther to ferret out all every single option that will help my love one heal.
As I said earlier this is a battle I either win or die fighting.
This is the brave side. The one I have carefully and painstakingly crafted in the past weeks, since the word C entered our personal lexicon again. It is my battle gear: the words and expression to battle greedy men in white; the face to maintain while being buffeted by commiseration that will annoy, advise and questions you have to answer and above all the one to be perfected so that my loved one feels that everything is possible and that cure is just around the corner. Can’t he see it in my face.
This brings back a memory long forgotten. I must have been four and we had a terrible car accident in which my mother had broken many bones: ribs, sternum etc. I was barely hurt as she had protected me – no seat belts then – and looking at her started wailing thinking she would die. She just kept smiling, hiding her pain, and talking to me in reassuring words till help came, last as she had not let out a scream. I am not Kamala. But today Mama I need you to give me that strength and composure. I know you will.
However behind this brave face that is I hope well in place, I am breaking into million pieces. I am angry, scared, hurt, helpless and alone. The tears that are welling inside me threaten to come out and it takes me all my strength to stop them coming. Do tears dry inside you. I hope they do.
The C word can shred you of your dignity, take away your wealth and your life’s effort. I will not let it do so. I will heed good advice and shun the rest. I will draw strength from my nuclear family, my little grandson and the one that came into my life a decade ago and all my pwhy family, that is all of you.
Maybe pwhy came into my life so that I would not be alone in my time of trouble.