The need to maintain hope and optimism
What is it like to hear that one of your parents has been diagnosed with cancer? How will you react? Will you feel terrified, angry, hopeless, guilty, or sad? There’s no instruction manual for being the child of someone who’s ill. What can you do? How can you help your parents?
Cancer is something that we often just hear about as a type of illness, but what does the pain feel like? I myself have no idea, as I never had any related experience until my mom, out of the blue, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer last month.
What is stage 4 cancer? According to Healthline.com, stage 4 cancer is an advanced cancer. It means that the cancer has spread beyond its original location and into other areas of the body. It isn’t usually curable, but treatment may improve overall survival and quality of life.
Treatment options and survival rates for stage 4 cancer greatly depend on the type of cancer, how well it responds to treatment, a person’s overall health, and several other factors. Treating stage 4 cancer can include a combination of therapies such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, or targeted therapy.
Reading the explanation really broke my heart. I felt disappointed, sad, and furious. Why was it my mom? My 61-year-old mom? Shouldn’t she be living happily at this age — spending the rest of her life doing what she loves instead of having to endure the misery she is now?
I’m disappointed with myself. I should have spent more time with her when she complained of back pain for the past few years. I should have made sure she went to a clinic or hospital for check-ups and treatment instead of relying solely on traditional medicine.
I’m also furious when I think about why medical professionals were unable to detect the insidious disease earlier — when it was still in the early stages — and why they only realised it now after the cancer had already advanced to stage four.
I often ask myself “why,” and it even gets carried away in my dreams! But that’s just my feelings as the child of a cancer patient.
What did my mother really feel? How did she manage to put up with all of her suffering (for quite a long time, I guess)? Does she share my disappointment, sadness, and anger?
Actually, she was scheduled to undergo chemotherapy this month, but since her health condition is unstable, she can’t go through with the procedure.
As a result, specialists recommended radiotherapy. However, luck wasn’t on her side at this point because she couldn’t lie flat on her back; it would give her a severe headache and possibly make her pass out, so neither treatment was an option at this point.
According to a doctor, the headache was caused by cancer that had spread into other areas of her body. The doctors have also attempted to give the strongest painkiller, but it has been unable to even slightly lessen the discomfort.
As of now, all they can do for her is regularly administer painkillers while also keeping an eye on her health.
It all actually started in 2013 when my mom, one morning, suddenly felt a sharp discomfort running from her right scapula (shoulder blade) to her breast. As the pain was intolerable, my younger brother immediately took her to the hospital.
At the hospital, the medical professionals took an x-ray of her breast but found nothing unusual. Dissatisfied with the results, they decided to perform a second x-ray, and that’s when a specialist found a small lump, which is believed to be a tumour, on her right breast.
According to my mom, the doctor gave her two options at the time: to remove just the little lump or to remove the whole thing, including her right breast. The first option seems easier, but experts caution that if additional tumours are discovered, the entire breast will need to be removed, necessitating additional surgery.
She therefore made the decision to choose option two and have everything removed, including one of her breasts. Thankfully, the surgery went well, and she then had to undergo radiotherapy for 35 consecutive days, starting the day after her surgery.
Thanks to the persistent work of her doctors and the treatments, she recovered very well and is back to living her normal life.
My mom’s journey has greatly impacted my family and me. She teaches me that, despite challenging circumstances, obstacles can be overcome. She has overcome a great deal of hardship, and by doing so, she has given me the qualities of resilience and perseverance.
The fact that my mom is still able to fight off this insidious disease may appear to be fortunate, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Most importantly, in my personal experience, are her constant hope and perseverance.
Gaining perspective on life, while not always simple or enjoyable, is the best method I’ve discovered to cope with a breast cancer diagnosis. Learn to appreciate life and to live it to the fullest.
The finest thing we can do is push through the challenging times to discover the shining glimmers of joy. And hope is what you need to deal with breast cancer. Hope from the diagnosed and hope from their families will allow for more of life’s bright moments to shine through the cloudy horizon.
If you have a parent with cancer, learning more about the disease will help you comprehend what your parent is going through. Some of the fear can be reduced by being more knowledgeable about cancer and its treatments. Sometimes what you imagine is actually worse than reality.
Although we couldn’t walk in their footsteps, we could do the next best thing: walk beside them.
With her increasing age, I sincerely hope (and pray for a miracle) that my mom will be able to manage this incurable illness once more and live out the remainder of her days in good health.
My siblings, Mike Ili Rogers and Francesca Elisa, deserve special recognition for caring for my mother (and also my late father) while I was away in Malaya many years ago.
I overheard my mom telling my mother-in-law sometimes in the last month that she would consider herself extremely fortunate if she survived through the end of this year because the pain she was experiencing at this time was unbearable.
To readers of all faiths, I humbly ask you all to please include my mom, Nanomi Walter Baki, in your prayers. May God restore her health and give her more time to be with her grandchildren.
And to all cancer patients: keep fighting, never give up, and don’t lose hope. You are actually much stronger than you think!
