"It is such a secret place, the land of tears."

As I write this, I'm sitting in a hospital room in Philadelphia. My mom is laying in a hospital bed, wearing a cheap pair of headphones and falling asleep to a meditation CD on a Coby disc player. My headache has faded, and the pit in my stomach has been replaced with hunger pangs.

While my fingers pluck away at keys on a laptop, my mind is racing like it hasn't done in a long, long time. Depression rises and falls like a wave. With it apprehension and fear and anger. Hope and longing.

What's left of my mom's hair is a mess and still falling out on the pillow. This time more from malnourishment rather than chemotherapy. The light plays tricks with the shadows. Her skin is pulled too tight across her frame, and her port--the port that was supposed to be barely noticeable--sticks out of her chest like a cube of bone.

Rufus Wainwright's version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" drifts through my own headphones.

Part of me wants to run away because it doesn't know how to deal. The part of me that never knows how to deal. A part that I hate.

But I don't run away.

There is no beep from an IV drip. There is no mechanical purr of machinery to blow off CO2 from her lungs or alarm rigged up when she doesn't take a deep enough breath. It's just "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and her breathing. Noise from the nurses drifting through the door. Fingers tapping keys. Stomach growling.

Philadelphia was her second opinion. It turns out it will also be her last chance. Our last chance. The tumor isn't any normal tumor. Why would it be? Look out your window. Do you see that tree over there? Do you see how the branches grow from the trunk, and how those branches extend and grow and have smaller branches and smaller branches growing and extending and reaching into the sky?

Take that picture of that tree with it's almost endless branches, hold it in your mind, and shrink it. Shrink it until it fits not above your liver. Not below your liver. But inside your liver. Those branches? They don't reach to the sky. They crawl along your bile ducts and strangle them closed. They don't shade you from the sun. They prevent your liver from processing toxins. And medications.

My mom is sleeping in the bed with a tube hanging out of her side draining bilirubin from her cancer-riddled liver. But remember those branches we talked about? There are too many. They drain does it's job wonderfully--it drains the bilirubin from the side of the liver it's in. But there is too much. In fact, the organ functions so poorly that fluid drains into her abdomen and her belly painfully swells.

For the second day in a row, they brought her in to drain the fluid from her stomach. It's possible there is cancer there now too, but no one has mentioned it since the possibility was brought up. In truth, until the tests come back, there is no point in worrying about the possibility.

This is the story.

The plan was to drain the liver enough to be able to place a stent or two and help it function on its own. The bilirubin would drop to a safe level. Chemo could begin. Tumor would shrink. Then localized chemo to kill it off. That was then.

Now. The tree is too strong. The stent will never work. Other problems are arising. Like her inability to eat enough to keep the rest of her body working and the fluid pooling in her abdomen. The new plan. If all goes "well." Tomorrow, a feeding tube through her nose. Thursday, a permanent drain in her abdomen. Thursday or Friday, aggressive chemo to be continued once a week for two or three weeks until her body adjusts and a regular schedule can be established.

The nurse just came in to check the drain. My mom stirred but didn't really wake up. She made a sleepy request and I changed the CD in the Coby player. I gave in and am eating half a blueberry bagel. (Blueberry bagel? Seriously?)

I look at her face and I remember wiping the tear from her eye before she went in for the procedure this morning. She cried. I had to leave the room before the doctor told me it was time to go. I couldn't look at my aunt as we walked to the waiting room. It was the only reason we held it together.

Water. All I wanted was some water. And some air. My Klean Kanteen was in the car. I cursed myself with every step there and back. "Pull it together. Pull your shit together."

Suddenly I'm still a little boy. Mothers aren't supposed to cry. They are strong. They are infallible and invincible. I'm a little boy, terrified and huddled in a stranger's body watching my sick mother dying... Is she really dying? in a hospital bed.

But I have to be positive, right? We have to be positive. Take things in stride. One step at a time. One day at a time. We hope and we pray. We put our trust in this hospital with it's cutting edge technology. With it's amazing nurses (who seriously are among the kindest people I've ever met in my life) and it's renowned doctors. With the oncologist who will treat my mom when everyone else gave up. With the surgeon who saw her smile and told us, "I need to make this woman better."

Hope and Faith. Fear and Despair. They are sitting with me on this couch keeping my company. They watch me type. They gaze into her face and look me in the eye. They wave as Regret walks by (yeah, that was from the blueberry bagel...). They will climb under the covers with me. I wonder if they'll stay the night.

My mom is snoring softly. And I wonder if I will find Courage tomorrow.

And cancer again.

This morning I received an email from my ACS partner's husband. He told me that his wife's husband passed away early this morning while she was on the last leg of her trip to the Philippines. She did not get the chance to see him before he passed away.

Her husband admitted he wasn't sure why he emailed me, but thanked me and the committee for all the work and dedication we've put into this Relay. That we've helped out and our efforts are appreciated.

This hit me a little harder than I thought it would. I knew it was inevitable, but I dunno.

It sucks.

Fuck'n cancer.

Bullies.

I saw this article on CNN last night and it really bothered me: My bullied son's last day on Earth. I don't expect you to read it, but the gist is this 11-year-old boy hung himself after school one day because he couldn't put up with being bullied anymore.

This isn't to say that there wasn't something else wrong with him, or maybe I'm just a little naive in thinking that suicidal thoughts don't really start till you are a little older. But the whole thing is awful. It reminds me of why I'm so jaded about people sometimes. This fifth grade boy had to go to school everyday and deal with people calling him ugly and gay and a virgin. (I'll admit I thought things really changed in elementary school, because I would have figured most of the 5th graders would be virgins. However, leave it up to the elite group of children to look at a kid from the Virgin Islands and figure that would be a great thing to pick on.)

I got bullied daily growing up. In fact, if I was in class with this kid I probably would have drawn some fire away from him. I was that ugly kid. The chunky, nonathletic, fro'd-out, thick plastic-framed glasses outcast. Heh, and looking back I probably didn't even realize it to the full extent of what it was. Kids made fun of me in elementary school, but it wasn't too bad. Middle school was worse. I'd get pushed in the halls sometimes, people would laugh at me in gym class, ask me why my nose is so big or why I was so ugly. This one kid used to call me "queer boy". (Which I admit in 6th and 7th grade I had no idea what "queer" meant other than the original definition: odd or questionable. No, I didn't have a social life back then either, so I read a lot.) And once this kid even pulled a knife on me on the bus. Those 3 years were among the worst of my life.

There is one difference between that me and this kid though. I never told anybody. I suffered pretty much in silence, resorting to a complaint of "I hate my life" rather than going to my parents or a teacher or anything. This kid did. I can't imagine how crushed I would have been if I told my parents that I was being harassed in school and nothing changed. Or if it got worse. I don't know where this sense of safety for kids in school comes from. These people who study bullying and all that. Are they stupid? It happens all the time. And there isn't really anything they can do to stop it.

I'm glad that I wasn't suicidal in elementary school, or that I didn't even really think of it until after middle school. My heart breaks for this kid. To go home, walk to your room and hang yourself in a closet with your belt... How does a boy do that?

I hope those kids that made fun of him realize what kind of pain they caused him. I wonder if they feel guilty, or if they'll change how they treat others. Or are fifth graders so hard-core now that they can shrug this off and blame the kid for killing himself?

Why can't we all just be civil to each other? Who cares if we all LIKE each other? Just be nice!

I hope that boy can rest easy now. I hope wherever he is, he can finally smile and laugh and be a care-free 11-year-old boy.

Did you hear the one about the cloned baby?

I dunno, this seems like it could be a bad idea. I understand the pain of losing someone and can't imagine how awful it must be to lose a child. But does cloning a lost child as a replacement seem like a good idea to anyone else? As it is, sometimes abortion seems to be used as a form of birth control. Are some [wealthy] people going to consider cloning as a type of "reset" button.

"Gee, honey, Junior is acting strange. Perhaps we should hit him with the shovel, scrape the inside of his cheek and start over."

Hahaha, okay, that probably wouldn't happen. But there's a whole grieving and acceptance process that I feel would be stymied by this. If you are that hung up about the loss of your child, cloning said child will not help you let go. Not to mention the fact that said clone wouldn't actually BE your lost child. Think of the years of therapy Cloney would need...

Of course, the whole article isn't about this one kid. But it addresses the inevitability of the cloned human. Sort of interesting, exciting and scary.

You can check out the article here:
Cady, the little girl killed in 2002 car crash who could 'live' again as a clone

Another cancer post...

Last week my ACS staff partner told me her father was diagnosed with cancer. I find this to be perhaps a little bitterly ironic, that someone who devotes herself to fighting cancer through her job now has to deal with it on that level.

What makes it tougher is that her parents just moved back to the Philippines for their retirement. Haven't been there even a year. Their family was worried he wouldn't receive proper care over there, or worse that they'd be taken advantage of because they're American (and hence must be made of money). When I talked to her last week, she told me they were going to make plans to have her parents come back to the states.

Then I got a phone call from her today. The cancer, which started in his lungs (he's never smoked, by the way) spread throughout his abdomen, effected his liver and other organs and will eventually reach his brain. There isn't really anything they can do, and it was suggested that the family see him while there was still time. She had to plan a trip to the Philippines with her 5 year old daughter in two (2!) days and is leaving tomorrow night.

I was pretty flabbergasted. I mean, what do you say to that? How do you even react to that? I felt awful, and in light of what's been going on--my earlier posts, not to mention GB's coworkers' (yes plural) family members dying of cancer or my co-worker's hygienist being diagnosed and passing away from a brain tumor in the 6 months between visits--I feel like I'm running in circles with all of this. I can't imagine what she and her family must be going through. It was tough enough for my family. Part of her's is on the other side of the WORLD. That's messed up. And being so involved with the ACS, I'm sure she knows more about what's going on than the average person would. I can't imagine and it sucks.

There was an article in Reader's Digest this month that I can't bring myself to read at the moment. (I actually read the whole rest of the mag practically cover to cover for the first time ever... It's a pretty sweet deal! More on that another time.) All I saw was "If you think of all the different varieties of cancer as making up an iceberg, cancers that cause symptoms represent only the part of the berg above the waterline." Wow.

So I know I'm pretty much fully vested in Relay. I'm also trying to keep myself calm with the prospect of my co-chair and I pretty much doing this whole thing on our own for the time being. (Being Online Chairperson in addition to Chairperson and a Team Captain... What the hell is wrong with me? Why can't anyone else step up to the plate??) I wonder if I'm building good karma to make up for the shitty person I am.

I'm going to need a very long vacation...

And cancer? You can fucking suck it.

"Why do people have to die?"

The other night Katie told me that one of the guys we went to school with passed away. From leukemia. It gave me pause then, it gave me greater pause last night when I looked up the obituary, and it made me sad as hell tonight when I found the blog that his fiancee kept during the end of his life.

I didn't read all of the posts. I don't think I can bring myself to do that right now. I don't think we were ever friends and it's beyond me if we ever actually talked to each other in class. But it still hits close to home.

The post his fiancee wrote on the day he died made me more emotional than I'd like to admit. I cannot imagine the turmoil that must have been for her, watching him die. Nor can I fathom what that must have been like for him, (hopefully) knowing his loved ones were there and that the love of his life watched him fade away.

Death is a curious thing. In the end it doesn't matter if he was just "this kid in my class" or my best friend. What matters that cancer robbed him of his love and his life and his future.

I've been so heavily involved in Relay for the past few years. While I've had friends and coworkers die from cancer, it wasn't until last year with my mom's illness that I really saw what this fight meant. Now, with his death I'm reminded again. This is why I take on this fight. This is why I get myself so involved. Relay is my way of fighting back and shouting to whoever or whatever is listening, that: "NO. We won't just accept this. I won't just accept this."

There's this episode of Six Feet Under where this woman is completely devastated by the loss of her aunt. When Nate is finally able to calm her down, she asks the question that I'm sure everyone who's lost someone asks: "Why do people have to die?" And Nate responds, "To make life important."

There's truth in that. Thank you for reminding me.

On a clear day...

I caught the end of a Scrubs episode before. It was from their second season, entitled My Philosophy. Part of the episode deals with a patient who is waiting for a heart transplant and her interaction with J.D. The patient, Elaine, has come to terms with the two possible outcomes, and she's not afraid of dying. What bothers her is the waiting.

J.D. asks her what she thinks death is like. She hopes it's like a big Broadway musical, with people dressed up and singing and going out with a flourish. J.D. on the other hand thinks it's more like a game of dodge ball, where you get nailed by the big guy, wake up in the hot nurse's office and "when she leans in to put that bandage on your nose, you get the feeling that something could actually happen if you just take the chance and bury your face in her knockers."

Towards the end of the episode, Elaine does die. As the doctor and nurses try to revive her, the scene fades to Elaine in Broadway-esque dress and she starts to sing "Waiting For My Real Life To Begin," (by Colin Hay) followed by the rest of the Scrubs cast. I actually know the song (and it almost made it onto my playlist!) but I don't remember hearing it in the context of this episode. It's poignantly sad and beautiful at the same time.

I love the lyrics. And how that one part utilized in the episode can relate to death not being the end, but the possibility of it being a new beginning. Maybe even a more important beginning?

"Don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin"

And as Elaine sings, "On a clear day, I can see... see a very long way," the scene fades back to the bed and we lose her.

Chills. Not for the loss perhaps, but for the pregnant possibility...