Ward C069

The past two days I have spent at the hospital. Mum was admitted late Sunday evening in preparation for her chemotherapy shots, and I stayed with her every night at the hospital, on a bench next to her bed.

The doctor says the new 'target therapy' raises the chance of success between 15 to 20%. But as with all medicine, there are side effects, including nose bleeds, hormonal imbalance, higher blood pressure levels... and a minimal, but not negligible risk of intestinal rupture and bleeding, which will require immediate surgery. Mum's colon cancer is already at an advanced level, and tumours have started developing around the lymph glands. Two years max, if the medicine does not succeed. Many more years, if the treatment is well received, and if the diet and daily habits are well looked after. Within a time span of less than two weeks, two shocks to my life.

Brother indeed began looking very stern and concerned, and became irritated at the fact that he was never told until two days ago, whereas I knew more or less how bad my mum's situation already is. Accept it, mum has always said. Life consists of birth, aging, illness, and death, as the local saying goes. But when I think about it, some people skip the illness part and go on living a healthy life until the inevitable death. Why both my parents have to undergo such fate... and why now, and together?

The sound of haggard coughing, wheezing, gargling of phloem... the weak, almost inaudible whisper of an old wrinkled lady telling her children her regrets and worries... the beeping of machinery, the stench of old laundry mixed with medicine. Hospitals are not a pleasant place, but a place where the air is stale, and the people stern looking and fragile. Save for the kindness and warmth of those angels in white, whose comforting words and smiles bring in sunlight into the artificially lit ward, there is little to cheer up the mood. I look at mum, eyes closed, sleeping, drugged by the medicine, and notice for the first time how the hairs around her ears have turned white.

Dad spent the last moments of his life in a hospital bed. Dad spent the last few days of his life confined within the confines of the huge hospital complex. The walls may have pictures of mountains, birds, and even photographs of Keukenhof where we once were together as a family, but nothing can replace that freedom of being able to wander the world freely, and free of illness. Thinking of dad, and how he must have wandered those very corridors, and at times sneaked outside for a quick cigarette, I feel comforted, but at the same time saddened. I look at the sad faces of patients and their relatives, I look at the cripple and the vegetated man in a wheelchair. So much pain, so much suffering... who will take care of them?

Her eyes closed, her arms still, and her posture serene and motherly. Sitting next to mum, I am for a moment glad. I can take care of her. While I still can.