how to deal (I)

*the first of many parts...because the entries are just waaaay too long*

september 16, 2011: this was the day we found out that my mom has stage 4 ovarian cancer. needless to say, it was more than a shock. mind-numbing, earth-shattering, devastating...these words didn't even measure up to how i was feeling that moment when i heard the news.

everything seemed so surreal. i felt like i was watching a movie or a series slowly unfold but the very weird part was that i was in it too. it didn't help that for the first time ever, i heard my dad tell me "i don't know what to do." i mean, this is MY dad we're talking about, the father who can be lovably comical yet be frustratingly inflexible with his beliefs. we're talking about a man who has an opinion on almost everything and troubleshoots almost anything, and suddenly, he's telling me that he's at his wit's end in this situation.



so that day, i did what any sane, rational adult would do: i escaped. i was working from home that day, but i couldn't stand the thought of staying in the house and facing what would surely be a very long and emotional family discussion. i packed my laptop and stuff, commuted to a nearby mall, had an impromptu massage, then parked myself in a coffeeshop and spent most of the day consuming tons of coffee and sugar in different forms. to record, that day was probably my most unproductive work day. that one excel sheet i was working on when my day started didn't even progress to half of what it should be worth when i shut down my laptop.

my escapist strategies lasted for weeks. never mind that i was spending more than usual on dinner-out's, lunch-out's, and countless sojourns to numerous coffeeshops. foremost in my mind was to stay out of the house, and keep out of it. my mom's cancer was way out of my capabilities. she has her doctors and a lot of well-meaning, opinionated relatives who constantly dish out advice (and who expect their pieces of advice to be ALL followed thoroughly) on her health. what more can i do, right?

then it all came crashing down one day when i caught my mom unawares in her room, and she looked so forlorn. i was about to tell my mom that i would have to do some overtime work in the office when she broke down in front of me. in between tears, she told me that she was scared that she's going to "move on" once she has had her hysterectomy. i tried reassuring her that her fears were unfounded, that she's way too young to die, that she still has to look forward to a future filled with rowdy grandchildren, and that i have yet to marry and i'll be needing her to get through all the pre-wedding craziness.

i lied to her that day. i told her that for some reason, i have no fears about her condition, that everything is going to be alright. i don't know if she believed me, but i glimpsed a sense of calm in her face. truth was, i've never been so scared for someone in my life as i was at that moment. i was pretty sure that she would survive her surgery. it's her timeline after her surgery that frightened me.

research is my cup of tea, and prior to my mom's breakdown, i had already done a lot of fact-checking and cross-referencing. statistics for stage 4 ovarian cancer survivors are NOT good, and try as i might to look for that proverbial needle that would disprove all the negative proofs, i just couldn't. i wanted a miracle. i wanted everyone to see that we could get through this, that we could more than just fight this--we could actually overcome this. i wanted the world to know that my mother is more than just a statistic.

in my own way, i was trying to make her feel better because i felt guilty. i felt that her being afflicted with cancer was my fault. according to her oncologist (and from my research as well), cancer cells thrive in an acidic environment, and our bodies mainly become acidic if we're undergoing stress. and for those of you who know my life story, we all know that i'm a HUGE part of that stress. in the hopes of attaining absolution, i was hoping that maybe my little lie could go a long way in making her believe in the impossible.