Close to Heaven

Treatment

Three months later

I was exhausted. Physically, mentally exhausted, and so sick. Every hour was another trip to the bathroom, dry heaving the nothing I had eaten all day. Radiation therapy to remove the tumor hadn't done a single thing. 

The doctors had begun with a surgery. Within a month of that, it was back. And so began radiation. The tumor was on my back, so the therapy didn't affect the hair on my head. That didn't mean the other effects weren't there. 

My back was itchy and blistering. I was constantly exhausted, and my whole body was sore. The perpetual vomiting was the worst, rubbing my throat raw. I weighed 38 kg and I could barely walk.

The radiation was getting me nowhere, as the surgery had. I knew where I was going. Hospice care was the next step for me. I think to myself how funny it is that the next step in some people's lives is to get a job, or maybe a boyfriend. 

Me? I'm off to hospice. I've been living in the same apartment with Jae Eun. She stopped her classes temporarily until I go to hospice. Both of us know I'm going, but neither of us says anything. She helps me to the bathroom when I'm sick, and pushes my wheelchair around when I want to go somewhere. The reason she's stayed with me through this whole ordeal was over my head.

Jae Eun helped me into the car for what was I hoped would be my last radiation treatment. I couldn't stand them. The one thing I can look forward to in hospice is no treatment. 

This made me want to spit out the musty, humorless laugh that had been the only wit to leave my mouth since the beginning of this ordeal. I didn't, not wanting to scare Jae Eun. 

She had become so serious and caring since I had gotten sick. I had changed her into a staid person, and I hated myself for it.