Pains

I forget far too easily that I am not the one with cancer. I forget far too easily that I am not the one with constant throat aches when I drink, eat or just swallow my own saliva. And because I forget so easily, I push mum too hard, and get frustrated whenever she appears to have so much difficulty eating and drinking, whenever I feel she is not eating enough.

I don't know why I am frustrated and even angry. It is not directed at her. It is at the entire situation, and how slow it is taking for her throat to heal ever since her last radiotherapy. The doctor said around two weeks. It's already been three, and counting. It is unbearable to see her screw up her face whenever she eats or drinks. But that has become something routine with every sip or every bite. And I lose my appetite too when she is like that.

I don't know what I can do to help her. She has taken all the prescribed medicine that her physicians have given her. Stereoids, anti-pain medication, morphine-dosed tablets. But the throat is still inflamed, and it seems her one of her tonsils is also inflamed... And only today did she reveal to me that she has felt this way throughout the trip, but she was so good at concealing the pain, so as not to make me worry.

She wants to wait a few days, rest at home and see whether the symptoms will go away. All this time, I thought she was getting better, but how fooled I was. Her bouts of coughing, the dryness of the long flights she has taken (four hours just yesterday), and mum talking as if everything were normal, even though her voice remains coarse and lost... all these factors are delaying her recovery, or perhaps even making her condition worse.

I helped clear out her suitcase today and do some laundry that had accumulated over the last two weeks. In her suitcase was a pouch, perhaps four, five kilograms heavy, loaded with pills and medicine. I closed my eyes when I held that in my hand, felt the heaviness of all those potions, all those chemicals, all those drugs that she has to take in every day to keep the tumour from spreading. "It will spread quickly if I stop taking them," she reminded me yesterday, not long after we landed. I opened my eyes, felt a pain tear through my heart seeing and feeling all those pills and medicine in my hand.

I forget too easily that I am not the one with cancer.

But I feel so utterly useless and unable to help take her her pains...