2007/07/22 19:00
Twenty-Eight
I've already spoken once about the fear, anger and resentment that comes along with losing a family member young during this project. But as I also mentioned, I certainly wasn't prepared for its potential return.
So when Sed's little sister contracted acute myelogenous leukemia shortly after her eighth birthday last spring, the previous loss didn't make that load of bricks falling on us any softer.
There are two types of blood cancers, I'd learn over the next seven months. AML is the "bad" kind, the kind that kills one of every two of its victims, the kind more likely to return. If Lourdess had contracted ALL -- acute lymphoblastic leukemia -- we'd have been able to bask in the comfort of a 99% remission rate. Instead, we were reduced to chewing our fingernails to stumps, hoping that she was the good one and not the bad.
By all rights, Lourdess's illness shouldn't have touched me like it did. She lives in another country, and I'd only gotten to play with her two or three times, and she wasn't actually my sister. None of that mattered, not before she was sick and less after. The girl took seconds to find footholds in my heart, and neither the distance nor the gaps in our company did anything to erode them. There's a picture on our family wall of Lourdess and I standing by a stream near her family's house, holding hands and watching the water. It's heartfelt enough that more than one person has asked if she's my daughter.
I'm not going to pretend I was the only one affected. Her sickness bombarded the whole family with grief and fear -- her parents, her sisters, her aunts and uncles. We managed to keep strong faces and keep Lourdess's spirits up, but it wasn't easy when we visited in August. Chemotherapy had taken her long hair; her color, once dark and rosy, was now wan; she took stairs less like an adventuring child and more like a laboring retiree; bouts of sickness lingered around every corner, waiting for an opportunity to strike. When she had to return to the hospital, Sed almost didn't fly back with me -- she was sure she'd be staying in Vancouver for a funeral.
Fortunately, not all stories of strife have the same vulgar ending. Lourdess got better, and Sed and I came home. Sometime around the end of October, the doctors reported that the leukemia was in remission. Within a month or two, she was able to return home. By February, she was back in school. In March, she and her folks visited us in Florida, and it did both our hearts good to see her regression from a thin, sallow invalid to the cheery playmate we knew before.
Officially, five years must pass before Lourdess is considered cured. As strong as her spirit is, and as much support as she has all around her, I don't think the cancer has a chance.
So when Sed's little sister contracted acute myelogenous leukemia shortly after her eighth birthday last spring, the previous loss didn't make that load of bricks falling on us any softer.
There are two types of blood cancers, I'd learn over the next seven months. AML is the "bad" kind, the kind that kills one of every two of its victims, the kind more likely to return. If Lourdess had contracted ALL -- acute lymphoblastic leukemia -- we'd have been able to bask in the comfort of a 99% remission rate. Instead, we were reduced to chewing our fingernails to stumps, hoping that she was the good one and not the bad.
By all rights, Lourdess's illness shouldn't have touched me like it did. She lives in another country, and I'd only gotten to play with her two or three times, and she wasn't actually my sister. None of that mattered, not before she was sick and less after. The girl took seconds to find footholds in my heart, and neither the distance nor the gaps in our company did anything to erode them. There's a picture on our family wall of Lourdess and I standing by a stream near her family's house, holding hands and watching the water. It's heartfelt enough that more than one person has asked if she's my daughter.
I'm not going to pretend I was the only one affected. Her sickness bombarded the whole family with grief and fear -- her parents, her sisters, her aunts and uncles. We managed to keep strong faces and keep Lourdess's spirits up, but it wasn't easy when we visited in August. Chemotherapy had taken her long hair; her color, once dark and rosy, was now wan; she took stairs less like an adventuring child and more like a laboring retiree; bouts of sickness lingered around every corner, waiting for an opportunity to strike. When she had to return to the hospital, Sed almost didn't fly back with me -- she was sure she'd be staying in Vancouver for a funeral.
Fortunately, not all stories of strife have the same vulgar ending. Lourdess got better, and Sed and I came home. Sometime around the end of October, the doctors reported that the leukemia was in remission. Within a month or two, she was able to return home. By February, she was back in school. In March, she and her folks visited us in Florida, and it did both our hearts good to see her regression from a thin, sallow invalid to the cheery playmate we knew before.
Officially, five years must pass before Lourdess is considered cured. As strong as her spirit is, and as much support as she has all around her, I don't think the cancer has a chance.
