PaperMoon Leaf

The First Crossroad

It was another hurtful day, another miserable morning seeing my mother sicker, weaker, sadder. my sister has called for the ambulance provided by the local barangay unit.
i heared some close friends from the neighbors come to assist us, they were outside the house and my father was having frantic short exchanges of opinions outside.
i strode fast to the room where my mother lays on a soft thick pile of bedsheets. her adult diaper need not be changed, we were so much in a frantic hurry anyway. the room was disarrayed. medicines and napkins and disinfectant bottles was scattered anywhere.
i held my face very close to her's and i said to her in a whisper-like manner,
"you will be alright. you will get healed. God will heal you. In fact God has already healed you. you will be strong again, you will be healthy again. just pray. just pray. and just believe it."
i could see tears welled up from her eyes, she was hurting emotionally and physically. she managed to look into my eyes, her gazed penetrated into my heart, deep into my soul. i knew she wanted to live, she really love to live for a very, very long time she was telling us that.
i was hurting and i was weak both in mind, spirit and body.
but i was keeping my mask of false strenght worn on my face.
friends from the neighborhood came and carried my mother outside to the ambulance. my father can not carry her, my father is already more than 70 years old and he was shaky from what has been happening to my family.and the only brother i have is living and working in abroad.
My sister and her three daughters and her husband live a few miles from my parents' house. my father and i was both with our hands on my mother's sides to keep her steady, and i was at the same time texting sms to my sister. we have agreed to inform her when we would be nearing their subdivision's gate so that she can spot the ambulance quickly.
my sister went up the ambulance at once and embraced my mother quickly as she sat at her side. sister was mumbling some short prayers i could manage to hear amidst the noise of the traffic.
people are born into this world without anticipating how life would be like for them, still all of us once given by God the chance to live a life, are instinctively fighting to live no matter what. no matter how hard life is to them. and my mother ever since is a survivor. a fighter. a warrior. it is her being that that made me love her so much. her passionate love for her family, and yet so strong a character she is.
it has been about 5 or 6 months since she gotten sick. no one among her family members have ever thought it would last this long, that her health could fall like that. she was already came to 60 pounds and lesser everytime we bring her to hospital.the weight loss was really alarming. she could't eat. couldn't stand alone. she was on diapers. was given a lot of prescription drugs that dont seem to help or matter at all.
i need her. we ALL need HER because we LOVE HER SO MUCH. but we have come to realize that human love can never suffice. no matter how much you love a person no matter how much you give your whole self and life to that person who means everything to you, still, we dont hold life in our hands. everything depends on God himself. every breath rely on God's decisions alone. and God's will is always what wins in the end.
Alabang Medical Clinic is my mother's first experience of medical checkups and laboratory tests. the second hospital we brought her to is the Asia Medical, and the third was the LaSalle University Medical Center. AsiaMed and LaSalle was where she was confined. At the Alabang Medical Clinic my father and sister got mad although we dont really let the doctors notice that.
We were told that they lack the necessary equipments for cases like my mother's. After some explanations and questions and answers we drove back to the traffic and this time it was going to be at the LaSalle University Medical Center. during that time, it was yet her first time to be brought there.
Can you imagine why doctors there tried to "Advise" us to try "mercy killing"? i dont know what is the society's stand for mercy killing, i dont care even if the whole world agrees on that but for us daughters, son and husband and family, mercy killing is one huge stupidity in this world beyond words.
i dont know, if for some strange damn reason would i be trying that myself someday, but one thing my family was so sure of that time that NO, we were not listening to those dumb doctors impossible "advice". judging from my mother's appearance, she doesnt need any damn stupid "mercy killing" of any sort ever. yes, honestly. yes, she was very thin, was not eating, bedridden, and her prognosis was not good according to the doctors, but mind them we came there to FIGHT and not to surrender. and we were willing to hold on to any hope how thin or blurred that hope seem to be. and besides, my mother never appeared as one of those very few persons who would need that damn "medical mercy" thing.
My mother was released from the hospital and was brought back, again. after a few days my brother arrived from California USA. my mother was lying on her bed beside the wide opened window to allow some fresh air. before entering the room my brother held my eldest sister's hand. he managed some few alcohol drinks at my sister's house, it was his way of hiding his weak emotions.
my brother and sister, my cousin, me and nengneng entered the room. my father was at the kitchen. my brother held up his hand holding a big plastic of LANSONES fruits.
he said, "mother, iam already here, i have arrived already. look, i brought you lansones, lots of lansones, this is your favorite, see, lansones.."
my mother was not responsing to him but she seem to glance at him, and her eyes looked moistured with new tears, but the tears donot seem to really flow normally.
he said again, "why did you got so thin mother? i did not expected you to be that thin"...
his voice staggered at some words, i couldnt managed to control my self from crying. rich tears rolled down my face, they were all reddish and controlling their tears. my cousin remarked to me not to cry. well, she is my mother. how come i would not?
my brother and sister and I all conversed and agreed to bring my mother again to the hospital. we all knew it was not healthy, not a good idea. bringing her there only means another additional pricks in her hands, dextrose, medications that are too harsh to her system, stress, fatigue, emotional and physical exhaustions... but we needed to gamble.
At the LaSalle University Medical Center we learned that she badly needed to be on extensive care unit. and in three-days time we would be paying twenty thousand pesos, or more. and in the exceeding days, the doctors said that they could not really give any exact amount of bills that would be needed to get payed, which we know is understandable since we know that once a person needs thorough medical attention you can not determine any exact digits or outcomes. my sister never leaves my mother's side wherever the doctors bring her. she made sure that she know and she witnesses everything they do to her. if only were allowed, we all would have gotten inside the room too.
the four of us - me, my brother, nengneng and my cousin went outside and stand-by beside some low growing trees and shrubs.
"this is my first day, i have just arrived today but this is what happening already. very high expenses, and mother's health..." he looked down, somewhat it feels a little bit okey to have someone share the same emotions. i said, "it is a good thing you have arrived anyways, she always waited for you to arrive. it can add strenght to her to see you here".
"about what you told me, the judge who can heal people's diseases, and his friend catholic nun, how about them yet? you see them soon. do you have their contact number? can you call them and tell them to please see mother? tell them that we will pay for their fare expenses". he said to me.
"yes, iam already in agreement with judge floro, he said i only have to obey some things he want me to do before he would come and see mother. he said i should first see the healing nuns".
my brother took a long deep sigh. "do that fast".
he and my cousin went a few steps away to smoke cigarette. nengneng and I was left to exchange some chit chats. i really did not enjoy chit chats that time. i suppose it was my brain's instinct to divert my attention to some thoughts that could "relax" my mind a little bit.
nengneng told me to keep believing in GOD, "that is exactly what we are all doing", I told her.
A few years ago my mother sometimes feel very uncomfortable stomach ache and our usual first aid to that was her to lie down comfortably on her back, and roll on her stomach a glass bottle filled with hot water, or drink some warm water little by little, or take some ginger ale. that usually did the trick. it cured her. and she would be back on her usual power and energy.
it was the first week of May 2012 when mother was first accompanied to a semi-private medical center due to her strange stomach ache. we felt relieved when the doctor at the Alabang Medical Clinic presumed that maybe it was her inability to move bowel in a normal manner that causes her stomach ache, but he said that if the prescribed medicine did not help her relieved, we were to go back so she could check my mother for some further reasons.
as we were leaving the doctor's room, we exchanged comments how unhealthy it really is when a bowel is not ousted from the system.
"it is a garbage, you're really supposed to put all that garbage away in your body", mother commented energetically. sadly, the prescription did not worked good for her. We changed doctors, we allowed mother to undergo several laboratory tests, we even agreed including mother - to let her take a lot of different precription drugs, we even bought a herbal tea from the counter for her bowel movement which was good anyway, her bowel was a lot, was released comfortably.
mother was diagnosed diabetic, with uti, and with other minor ailments. but it was not the cause of her bad health. it was something else.
mother has already lost some weight when Doctor Masa advised her the CT Scan. After a few days of waiting for the result, when we came back to the Alabang Medical Center mother has lost another weight. Dr. Masa opened the envelope containing the ct scan result very quickly, and upon the look in her face she showed strangeness, she looked up and told mother to wait for us outside her room. mother sat outside, some patients was still waiting.
Dr Masa said, "i do not want your mother to hear what iam going to say, i want her to fight. She had pancreatic ca. as i suspected it"...
her words blew me and my sister like a huge balloon that was going to be too big for our sizes and blow away and be gone, it was a feeling of a thousand emotions, all fear and painful, weak and defeated.
we could not speak, we could not comprehend why life no matter how hard you try still manages to ebb away from humans. no matter how you believe that life will still be the same good life we all used to live and know, seem to be coming to some dreadful dead-end.
the doctor's room look and felt strange, suddenly it seemed melancholic and dark, it felt ugly. the world felt unfair, and faith unjust. i could not tell if Dr Masa looked like an enemy or a sympathetic doctor-next-door. She told us about radiation, about chemo, about biopsy, and etcetera.
things we were willing to try but rather would not because Dr Masa said it depends on mother's capacity to bear the procedures, and the result was never guaranteed to make mother well and live very, very long.
if you were to choose, what would you do? would you let your mother undergo inhumane medical "try-outs" and lose? or not allow mother to suffer inhumane medical "try-outs" and lose? either way, it yields to same result. what we needed was a MIRACLE.
So i searched for natural and spiritual ways of healing a person. most of them we tried, if not all. we even tried the product of a quiete well-known am radio anchorman, but when his Guardian Crystal failed to cure mother, he introduced me to one of his two personal healers, a man from Bicol province who was at that time in Palawan province.
We arranged for his round-trip flight from palawan to manila, and manila to palawan, all expenses paid by my brother and sister. the healer stayed one week in my mother and father's house where i also live. he promised that by september or november my mother would be in total recovery, which obviously a damn stupid thing to think so, it never happened.
when the healer returned to palawan province my mother is back again to the hospital. and this morning of my story, we were in an ambulance. the first time this happened that we badly needed to bring her by ambulance. what a life.
we never told mother what was her real health condition. we allw anted her to focus on her recovery, we wanted her to believe that she will get healed and believing is what makes the body responds positively. anything you feed the mind, the body believes. and the body achieves. where did we go wrong? is this what they call final destiny? that even science and faith can not alter?
her room was assigned in the 7th floor. it was a semi-ward one, nice and clean according to my judgment. my father, my sister, my cousin and nengneng and my neices all take turns to watch for her. the hospital food is not appealing, of course it needs to be "healthy". it was my mother's ration and we eats them, but sometimes we leave them untouched. we buy foods at the canteen so we could eat well and have energy. mother would always say she would eat them later. but her "later" is always not eating them at all. our favorite food was noodle, it was easier to prepare, just add hot water, cover for 3 minutes, and eat you go.
one time mother said she wanted to drink del monte pineapple juice in can so we went all the way to waltermart, kinda a lot of yards away and it was sunny day, very hot and tiresome.
we asked the nurse at the nurse station if she could be given a few mouthful of juice in can but they said she should not because her stomach might get acidic and ache. i remember my mother's story when she gave birth to me. drinking water was very prohibited by mothers. the medical reason was not clear why.
one of the doctors begged her to keep quiet about his giving of her a few swallow of water, because he said he could get fired if the superiors learned he disobeyed. they said it was very bad to drink water when a woman has just given birth. i do not know if it is still being practiced today. maybe it is not anymore.
see, my mother was very alright. nothing bad happened to her even if she drank water that time. i really wonder how doctors and science could get so "stupid" sometimes. drinking that water literally invigorated her, my mother said.