Thursday, August 28, 2008 Cajucom: Ramblings in melancholy By Regina Cajucom Serendipity Couch
I AM having the longest week ever.
Last Thursday, we rushed my Mama to the hospital due to pneumonia. She is 73 years old, and has been living and breathing on one lung (the other was removed due to pneumothorax) for the last 38 years.
That is way longer than I have lived and breathed so far with the help of two healthy (passive-smoking, actually) lungs. Mama's remaining lung is now sick and is having a rough time doing the work it has done alone for the past 3 decades.
Mama was last hospitalized in November 2007. That was a serious predicament for us, because we had planned to bring her up for the holidays. Due to her recent hospitalization, however, her doctor advised against our plan for her to celebrate Christmas in Baguio, saying her health might deteriorate even before it had fully recovered, what with the holidays coinciding with cold Baguio weather, and with our low level of oxygen due to high altitude.
I saw the pained look in her eyes as she considered Christmas away from us, from her apos whom she adores with all her heart.
On December 22, 2007, Mama was brought up to Baguio, full of apprehension but with much eagerness. Don't get me wrong, I strongly considered the doctor's advice, but let's just say I firmly believe in a higher power, the power of one who can make all things possible, including giving a longing grandma her much-deserved time with those she loves the most.
My prayer was simple: Just let her spend Christmas -- and if possible (although this already considered a bonus)-- New Year -- with us, sans any glitch whatsoever.
It's been eight months since. This is, by far, the longest she ever stayed with us. God's grace and the happiness in her heart was more than enough to sustain her. Not once did she get weak, or sick, although she required at least 16 hours of being hooked to an oxygen tank each day.
We had managed to keep her healthy until recently, when endless heavy rains had taken its toll on her fragile system. She did not want to go to the hospital, but we had no choice when she could no longer eat, or even drink, and her body deteriorated considerably.
On Sunday night, Mama's CO2 levels increased to an alarming rate. The good doctors of SLU Hospital of the Sacred Heart had to insert tubes to help release that much carbon dioxide from her body, and immediately transferred her to the ICU.
My Mama used to tell me she prays to God that when she goes, it will not be painful. But that night, it looked like she was in so much pain. Mama is a devout Christian who reads the Bible everyday, and communes with God for most part of her long days.
While waiting for blood tests, lab results, and doctors' explanations, I was crushed and weary, with eyes withered from too much crying, and with bouts of questioning on the unresolved paradox of why good people suffer.
Flashback two weeks ago, in one of our conversations, Mama told me that she thinks God subjects people to a cleansing process, which may be painful, in order to prepare them to meet Him. I dread to consider the possibility that her cleansing process may have begun.
Mama is still fighting it out there. Strapped to a ventilator, not being able to talk and asleep most of the time, a lump forms in my throat every time I visit her at the ICU.
I try so hard each time to fight back the tears, wanting to hide how my spirit is shaken. I want her to know I'm with her all the way, fighting her battle as courageously as we both could.
At times panic creeps in -- that fear that there might be no point in all these, that unless I have the capacity to breathe for two, I cannot save her. It is at these times when everything becomes a test of faith. But there is no option other than to carry on and fight -- this was how she raised me.
