Tell Laura I Love Her

Laura is now 11 year old.  She was first time diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma , a rare , but an invasive childhood malignant tumor,  in Vienna, Austria,  where we lived then, as a five month old baby.  She did not remember it consciously.  She was in remission for 11 years, medically she was cured, but never say never, the beast came back this summer, literally we got news of her positive biopsy on last day of her school, when we were preparing next day to go for summer holiday.

Suddenly, illness arrives, uninvited, incomprehensible. The arrival of illness forced itself into our lives where there was no place for it. It disrupted our cycle of life breaking out its natural parts.  

The disbelief, the doubt, the acceptance, the pain, the shame,  the anger, the grief, the symbiotic connection with my child.

Why she now?  Why me?   I want her to live and escape it, get me out of it. This is not my life,  this is not her life, she  has not deserved it, why God has picked her?  I hate this illness, and what it’s done to me and my daughter.   

I must fight again, oh God, I do not have the strength again.  My friends saying I can do it, she is lucky to have me so strong,  but I do not want to be strong,  I want to be weak,  I need help,   ….G(…),  be the strongest this time.  My life is endless battle……

We found ourselves captivated between life and death, night and day expelled to an unknown place – between light and dark, you can call it whatever you want,  but believe me , it is an another reality, or surreality where you are forced into.  You feel like you are not longer here, but not there as well.  You must be prepared to fight, you must be prepared to learn your lecture, you must be prepared to accept inevitable as well.

When you are faced with this illness which is still taboo, you feel alienated from society, you feel like you don’t belong to normal reality anymore, with strange feeling of guiltiness and ashamed that you are not part of normal functioning anymore, simultaneously with feeling of anger that illness has struck you, and that you can not do anything about it.  

They tell you she has %80 of surviving , they don’t tell you that a 80% chance of cure means a 20% chance of death.  You’re left to work that one out for yourself. I think this is because cancer, being still incurable disease as such is related to a death sentence. Yet, in our mind we know that dead sentences is given to people who did not behave properly and within the rules.

 Physical illness needs not only conventional treatment, but also emotional tendering and like a guardian angel around her is a sense of faith in the invisible, inner spiritual strength.

When feeling low and vulnerable, in a serious illness your appetite for love can become insatiable.

Healing is brought about not just by medicine.  It is not just treatment which cures you, but all that includes the human touch.  

A smile means more than an injection, a hug more than platelets transfusion.  The face and encouraging  words  of our family and our friends, of her nurses and doctors,  the face of social workers and charity volunteers , show sympathy, compassion and understanding.  Those  human faces bestowed so much to the healing of Laura’s little anguished soul.

I was used to do things by myself having nobody to help me, I was reluctant to ask for any help, and it was thank to charity workers who pushed me to comprehend that they are feeling sorrow and sadness with us, willing to help us, and to discharge us from practical and financial “chores” that go in dealing with this illness.

However, cancer, like all illnesses, tend to be a big teacher.  Throughout this cancer journey I faced things I never thought I could.  I am learning things about myself, about Laura, about medicine I never knew.  I opened myself to another alternative treatment, I learned about amazing people, their courage, and try to broke conventional, I learned that I have to face my fears, I learned that this life is jsut one perception, another is death, but as life’s perception is so big and encompassing we can not see death properly, but it is still impossible perception. I could never have known any of that beforehand I know now.

Laura has ended her chemotherapy treatment, she is in remission again since 2nd block of chemotherapy. She responded well to chemotherapy and to an alternative therapy of  Dr Beljanski’s products I am giving to her synergistically.

by mama, 12 December 2005

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