“My Body tells me no, but I won’t quit ’cause I want more, cause I want more…” — My Body, Young the Giant
Cancer is for the rich people. I believe it just like how others believe in superstition—irrational but nevertheless a belief so strong that it can hardly be disputed by the others. It is a disease I am aware exists but I have neither really bothered nor cared to understand. When someone gets I cancer I just know that he or she is rich. Period. So uneducated, so stubborn but that’s just me.
Several Decembers ago during our vacation in Bacolod, my wife and I visited my lolo while he is confined and bedridden in a hospital. My mother said he has cancer of the blood but I thought that maybe it’s something else other than cancer. Months passed after that and he succumbed to the disease, whatever it was. No, I believe it wasn’t cancer.
Years later, another one made a sad revelation that she’s got the condition. We learned that she’s had it since about three years ago. She kept it from everyone in the family until it has become so obvious. It was also cancer or so they say. I still didn’t pay too much attention to what caused it but from what I have seen the last time I saw her, it was painful, it was unbearable, it was just nasty. My sister-in-law died on that fateful December. It wasn’t from cancer.
Two years passed and a check-up due to unexplained bleeding started a series of hospital trips—we jokingly called it dates as it was only when we get to be away from Marcus—and consequent operations for my wife. Tumor, malignant, carcinoma, and other dizzying medical terms began to surface. The diagnosis screams cancer but I didn’t believe them. I told myself that it could be somewhat related and that it is just something else. Apparently, I am uneducated in this field. Or I just want to remain that way.
Again, we are not rich, though I used to believe we once were–relatively–so it can’t be cancer. I must be that stubborn, I must be that ignorant, or I must be just not so willing to accept—yet—that cancer is a fact of life. That it is the condition those people, not only patients but including relatives they bring along with them, who come in and out of the LINAC and BRACHY section of this hospital where I was at are dealing with.
My denial of its existence remains until now despite the facts. But for how long before I will admit that it is for real, I don’t know. Maybe soon or maybe after the 45th hour when my wife comes out of the radioactive brachytherapy operating room where I wrote this blog post as I look at the CCTV monitor to check how she is doing in bed. No wifey, it’s just a bad infection, it isn’t cancer. Hang in there.
***
Happy Valentine’s Day wifey. I wish you more Valentine’s Day to come.
***
Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Questions, questions, questions.)
Marcus Can Blog 