Yesterday I wanted to write, but I could not. My heart is oppressed. Maybe because images of other moments already lived in my family come back. I will tell you what happens.
In 2024, she is always smiling.
My niece, daughter of an older brother, calls me to help her take an IV line to her mother. Her mother is the first wife my older brother had. From that union came my first 4 nieces and nephews.
My oldest brother is now deceased, and my nephews and nieces are all married with children. So I am a second-generation aunt.
The situation is that the bond of love endures. My brother's first wife, she always remained my sister-in-law, another sister. She was diagnosed with cancer the year before last, in 2023. Since then, she has undergone several oncology treatments.
Her puppy, she is worried about not being able to take care of it.
Her stomach cancer does not stop; the therapies have only allowed her to stay with us longer with a little quality of life.
Yesterday I went to see her to help my niece. When I walked into her room, I wanted to come out and scream. Yes, I really wanted to. But I had to swallow my screams. I just did it inside. I had to blink as many times as I could to keep my tears from coming out. She was in pain and wouldn't look at me.
She visited me last month and had pain in her abdomen, but was telling jokes and laughing with everyone. What an antagonism to what my eyes saw yesterday.
She had been vomiting blood and also had bloody bowel movements. So his system was declining again, and he needed new therapies.
They took a blood sample, and her hemoglobin and hematocrit are below the estimated numbers to keep her alive. My suggestion is that they take her immediately for transfusion, and they did. At the hospital, they left her to get her blood therapies and then pass her home again, as she had nothing new to be studied. It is her same old situation.
Vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and transfusion again. Oncology therapy, and again the cycle repeats itself.
The boys are aware, but at the same time refuse to accept the loss.
Who wouldn't? No one wants to see their mother die like this.
It's like I'm reliving the moments with my mother, her struggling with lung cancer. The moments with my own pain fighting colon cancer. All those moments are pouring out of my pores. I relive the days of pain, of treatment, of relapse. Only my sister-in-law doesn't look any better than she did yesterday. I could see remembering, once again, how my mother received healing from her first cancer, the uterine one, how the second one took her after 15 years of health. I thought of the cancer that left me bedridden for 3 months while receiving cancer treatment.
The difference is that I kept my hope alive and God gave me healing through treatment. It is 13 years of healing for me.
These are the cruel moments that come to my memory today, after seeing her and remembering me. Moments spent in pain, of broken veins, of swollen veins, of veins lost through so many punctures, of chemotherapy treatment. Not counting the moments of cobalt treatment. I was irradiated so many times that my noble parts were burned to the third degree. I keep the marks of the detached skin; they are my memories of trophies for a war won.
I can say I beat it after all the pain I went through. But my sister-in-law has no improvement at all. She is always jumping up and down. When she jumps forward two times, it is because she jumped backwards four times. She is getting more and more down.
I feel so much pain in my chest that it feels like my inner fibers are tearing. I am used to seeing the pain of others and feeling my own frustrations inside me. I am used to seeing how the human being suffers with pathologies that have no return to healing. I saw many patients die that I attended when I was a resident or intern, in hospitals. People to whom I talked about positive thoughts.
Even thinking positively, you can find death. I am very sad because once again, cancer has come to the forefront of my life, with another family member. And I am afraid it is winning the battle. I can only tell my nephews and nieces to keep going. Giving him all we can while he is still breathing.
In you I trust.
My best care, my best prayers, my heartfelt tears, today are for her.
She is still in the hospital. There, they are giving her transfusions. Waiting for her to come home, to see her talk again, waiting for the next time. In the meantime, I can only pray and cry for her, as long as my relatives do not see me.
