If ever there was a good reason not to write, it would be pain. Like the one I am feeling of late. The kind of pain that may never ever fade.
How does one continue to write when there is such a pain? A pain that’s now a permanent fixture in my life? Like an annoying mosquito that hovers just out of sight, yet you can hear its snickering buzzing within earshot. And at its most intense, this kind of pain can feel like a ton of bricks sitting on my crestfallen chest, threatening to destroy my resolve to overcome it completely.
It is unflinching. And I’m powerless to defeat it.
I’m talking about the pain of loss. Or rather the pain of potential loss.
You see, my wife was recently diagnosed with advance ovarian cancer.
How It All Began
It all started exactly on the first of this month, a Friday.
My wife came down with a case of stomach cramps, discomfort, pain, and bloatedness. Like any normal person, the first recourse was to suspect food poisoning (or something benign), and to go to the nearby clinic to see a doctor for it.
As we had just moved into our new place barely a week before (on July 26), it wasn’t a familiar clinic to us. But it was one of those listed in her company’s medical benefits scheme (meaning any expenses there would be covered by her employer). So it made sense to go that clinic.
Suspecting some gastrointestinal issue, the GP at the clinic prescribed the usual array of medicines, including painkillers and something to ease the bloatedness.
Two days later, the pain and discomfort worsened, so it was back to the clinic again. More medicine was prescribed along with a medical certificate to excuse her from work.
Sadly, by the next evening, a Monday, my wife’s abdominal pains had taken yet another turn for the worse. To add salt to injury, a mysterious stabbing pain was felt on the left of her abdomen, somewhere between her ribcage and her waist. It was nearly 9pm by then, and the clinic was closed for the day.
So we rushed to a different clinic this time (one that was opened 24/7), whereupon the attending GP, suspecting gall bladder infection (my wife had a temperature), wrote us a referral letter to the A&E department of the nearest local hospital.
So away we went, hearts a-pounding.
Surgery Needed To Remove The Pain And Establish Cause
At the hospital, the initial prognosis was appendicitis.
To be certain, a few blood tests and a CT scan were done. From the scan, the doctors saw that she had a massive blockage in her colon. There were also unexplained growths of a sizeable nature in and around it. Specifically in her pelvic area and also near her peritoneum. This led them to suspect she could be harbouring cancer cells. To be sure, a colonoscopy was suggested to help them further investigate.
Feeling dismayed by the news, not only with the preliminary diagnosis, but also unsure of the ability of the medical team in this hospital, my wife called up an old school friend, who was a senior consulting doctor (in anaesthesia) at our country’s oldest and most established public hospital. Without hesitation, her friend immediately told her to transfer over to her side, specifically her hospital’s National Cancer Center, and to help get my wife an appointment with (to her) their hospital’s best oncologist surgeon in the area of gastrointestinal medicine.
Within less than a day of the call, an appointment was made on Aug 6 for us to see the surgeon (who was later to become our principal doctor).
The surgeon’s assessment? Likely Stage 4 malignant cancer, based on the CT scan. A major surgery was needed soon (not a colonoscopy, which might scrape and harm her colon passageway) to remove both the blockage and the growths. In order to relieve her symptoms and better ascertain what’s really going on.
The surgery took place on August 12, but due to her extreme pain and discomfort, my wife was warded August 8. In order to receive the best possible medical care leading up to the big day.
Our Pain Had A Name Now
To cut a long story short, all blockages and growths were successfully found and removed in that six-hour marathon surgery.
What followed, however, was a slow and painful recovery (that’s still ongoing now as I write). The wait to heal was excruciating enough, but in the days that followed, the dread as to what those growths really were was even more unbearable!
Still, my wife’s pain (and mine) was finally given a name three days ago, some13 days after her major surgery was done.
My wife was diagnosed with Advanced Ovarian Cancer (somewhere between Stages 3 and 4).
Needless to say, we were both relieved (that we now know what it was), and also terrified beyond measure!
By yesterday, the treatment plan was put forth to us by the chemotherapy specialist, another senior consultant working with our principal doctor: six cycles of chemotherapy — using drugs Paclitaxel & Carboplatin — spanning 18 weeks in total.
The first cycle (each lasts three weeks) would commence next month on 15 September. To give my wife’s body time now to recover first from the massive surgery she had.
In between, more tests and medications might be needed to ascertain my wife’s readiness for the treatment.
What If…?
While somewhat assuaged that concrete steps to intervene and arrest the issue are being taken, I don’t really need to tell you the extent of havoc to which this sudden and unexpected family crisis has wrought upon us and our sense of well-being. Our sense of how fragile our future is now.
When I think about cancer, I think about all the hopeful but also horrid stories you read, watch or listen to. Feeling them all coagulating now in my head into one unavoidable gangrene that is threatening to suck the very life force out of my body.
And that’s just me!
What about my wife, the undeserved victim of this monstrosity of a disease? And what about our kids, who needed to be told why their mom was in the hospital as long as she had been (at the time of her discharge on Aug 22 to return home, she had already spent more time sleeping in the ward than in our new abode!)?
What if…?
And there it is. The next thought. The beginning fringes of the pain I spoke of at the start of this post.
Writing Through Despite The Pain
Can I ignore this pain? Can I write through this pain into a place of (I don’t know) hope, peace, life? What will save us from falling into a deep pit of utter helplessness and despair?
CS Lewis once said (after his wife died) that he never knew grief felt so much like fear.
I wonder the reverse. Is this feeling of fear I have the same as the feeling of grief? The same as pain?
To overthink or contemplate too much is both inevitable for me and also potentially debilitating.
So the only way through this is to write. To put it all down so there is an outlet for me to process my current sense of loss and pain.
Will you keep me company my dear reader as I walk this new, unfinished journey?
Thanks for still sharing, despite what you and your wife are facing.
Thank you for sharing and keep on writing Kelvin. We journey this with you in prayers.