This week has been a rough week. I know I whine a lot but this has tested me and my family like nothing has for the better part of five years, I'd say. Certainly no one in my generation of my family has gone through this before, on this level.
A week ago last Wednesday we flew back from five days in San Diego. Beaches, museums, perfect weather, great food - it was relaxing other than getting there and back. Almost the proverbial calm before the storm.
Monday I called my mom and we were talking and all of a sudden her voice gets serious (like in the "somebody died" tone) and she goes "so [my aunt] hasn't called you?"
Me: "...no. Why?"
Come to find out, a week ago today/last Saturday/three days after we saw them, my cousin woke up blind in her left eye. Like bam, out of nowhere. They went to doctors and specialists in San Diego who diagnosed a brain tumor.
My cousin? Little B - not so little now, taller than I am, fluent in Mandarin Chinese, first chair in the clarinet, who succintly told me she wants to be an architect and study abroad in Beijing and build skyscrapers and go to Stanford like her dad - who dances randomly like the penguin from Madagascar on that one Intel computer chip commercial when dancey music comes on the TV - I held her on my hip when she was a baby - the quirky teenager who beads necklaces for her future empire in her spare time now couldn't see out of one eye.
So they drove back to San Francisco on Wednesday after the MRI in San Diego confirmed a glioma.
I got the news Wednesday morning, and Wednesday night at church I brought it up in our class when they asked if anybody had any prayer requests. It's odd for me to talk about things that I feel need to be prayed for, partially because I've been so skeptical about religion in my younger years that it makes me feel awkward, and partially because there's always somebody who has something much more horrible going on in their lives so I feel bad for bringing up my own worries, and partially because I'm not used to letting other people help me with my problems. It's hard enough sometimes to lean on my own husband because I am so used to just freight-training my way through my stress which I realize often ends in an emotional implosion.
We prayed. I remember hearing them say in prayer to lift her up, and in the earnestness of those words I felt tears coming to my eyes because they aren't Christian, and I hoped in my heart that God would somehow bless them even though they don't believe in it. Work your magic, deity, and please God make her be okay in spite of this. I felt my true desperation, of someone who can feel someone else suffering, and it breaks my heart in my own helplessness and my lack of control of the matter. And I cry because I am afraid, and I cry because the tragedy of it is that she is a really sweet kid in spite of how spastic her behavior is sometimes. She doesn't deserve this, I keep thinking over and over to myself. But then, who does?
I also got upset because it occurred to me that it's just her and my sister that I have on my dad's side. Our family isn't big like some, and we are close-knit when it counts, but at the end of the day it also occurred to me that my sister and I are all the cousins she has, and we need to be there for her like no other. I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
To be fair, I haven't called my aunt since then because to think too hard about it makes me break down and cry, and I didn't want to make her any more stressed than she already is. When I talk to her I want to be strong in my voice and right now when I start to talk about it sometimes my voice sounds like a record scratch.
I got an email from my dad yesterday, and my email goes to my phone, so of course I read it during the thick of work and misread it, and thought he had actually gone out to San Francisco to see my aunt instead of talking to her on the phone. I called my mom during my lunch break and my dad picked up her cell phone and I what the hecked a little bit. And then, a split verdict.
The good news: some head honcho cancer specialist in San Francisco has ruled that this is not a glioma. It's some big fancy name for what is essentially severe inflammation of her optic nerve.
The bad news: her other eye is starting to show symptoms.
So - a mixed bag? The inflammation they are thinking they can cure with some sort of steroids, and there is a possibility she could get her sight back within a few months. I don't know how to feel about this trial but I do feel that the prayer has done something. I've never experienced this before but it seems like when it counts God will in fact take control of the situation.
In the middle of the week when I was feeling really low and really unable to cope with this situation I found one of the psalms online and thought I would share. When I start to think about it and need to calm myself down (say, doing payroll at work and about to cry) I read over it on my phone and I think it helps:
Psalm 146
1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
2 While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.
3 Put not your trust in princes, [nor] in the son of man, in whom [there is] no help.
4 His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
5 Happy [is he] that [hath] the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope [is] in the LORD his God:
6 Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein [is]: which keepeth truth for ever:
7 Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:
8 The LORD openeth [the eyes of] the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous:
9 The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
10 The LORD shall reign for ever, [even] thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the LORD.
Again, this is a part of me that I don't really talk about and yet I feel like I've done that a lot lately. Growing up, Christians seemed like "those crazy biblethumpers" or looney evangelicals, highly offensive and oppressive people, and I don't consider Jay or myself to be in any category like that. I don't know. It tends to comfort me and I know as human beings we are presumptuous to think we know all the mysteries of the universe. But I feel like given how this week has gone, I needed to explain how I'm getting through it because that is just as important to me as the raw facts of what is going on.
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