Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang

There’s been a lot going on in our life recently. To update with the February posting, Alhamdulillah the result of the biopsy was negative. It’s just a benign calcification. That’s really a blessing. I felt like I was the luckiest person in the world.

We went on with our plan. We moved back to our home country, Indonesia. To a small city called Balikpapan. We live in company housing so the accommodation is excellent. Several days after we arrived, we were reunited with our daughter. I couldn’t describe how I felt. It just felt surreal, like a dream.

However, things weren’t like a Hollywood movie where everything just stops at the happily ever after scene. Life goes loooonggg beyond that point. For us, here comes the adaptation time.

It’s the adaptation with the time zone, with the weather, with the surroundings and most of all with our little daughter. It was a hard time both physically and emotionally. A mind in a body with prolonged sleep deprivation would not tolerate chaos really well. The mind would just go wrong. That’s what I felt at least. I was extremely exhausted from so many days of sleeping only 3-4 hours each day. I could have slept well but as a mom with a little kid experiencing a jetlag, you know how impossible it is. Feeling sleepy all of the time, I had to manage the house and stop the kids from fighting every second. Managing the house was easy breezy, but managing the kids was a headache. I didn’t know why my kids just couldn’t get along well. Why they were fighting, screaming, crying every second. I felt like my head was just going to explode.

And that’s not all. My kids were getting sick. First, my daughter was having a mouth sore followed by a mild fever. She was crying all day all night for 2 days. We took her to the doctor and she got better. Next, my son was having a very high fever he was shivering. Something that never happened before. My husband and I were panicked and took him to the emergency room in a nearby hospital, twice. Once in the middle of the night and once the following day. He was better after couple of days. After that, our bathrooms ceiling were collapsed during a very heavy rain.  It was so bad the repair would take 2 weeks time and we had to move to a temporary housing. Moving in and out and in and out and in, packing and unpacking, and packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking. Gosh, I felt like I was about to collapse as well.

And there I was. Having a bad cough and runny nose for a week, I started to felt a pain in my right forehead. A pain that brought tears in your eyes without you need to cry. Another thing that never happened before. I went to the doctor, got an MRI and was even told to have a biopsy in my sinus considering my medical history. Oh my goodness gracious….

However, besides all of the terrible things we were lucky we had a very solid support system. Our big family was helping during our early arrival. They stayed several weeks helping us with the adaptation. Our big thanks to our beloved family! A maid, driver and baby sitter were also easily available for us.  So, little by little everything went into places. The kids even though are not always playing together nicely they fight a lot less.  Our sleep even though is not a straight uninterrupted 8 hour long is so much better. We started enjoying our new life here. Appreciating the beautiful landscape, the friendly and safe neighborhood, the fresh air and healthy atmosphere. So every time I wake up from my nap with the kids, I’m always grateful for the greeneries and blue sky I see over my windows, for the life I’m living right now. If you just hang in there and keep believing, there’s always a light at the end of a tunnel.

Life is Happening Right NOW

For so many times we wait for special moments to enjoy our best things. We wear the best clothes only for date night outs, holiday celebrations, family gatherings, wedding receptions. We use our best china for very special dinners, carry the most expensive purses for strictly limited occasions, decorate the home only when guests are coming. For most of the times, the best things are just sitting there, idle, unutilised, in waiting.

The worse is we also wait to show our best self. We wait for Ramadhan to give zakat, wait for Ied Fitri to ask for forgiveness, mind our manners only when there are people we want to impress. We wait for birthdays to say how special someone is, to give presents, to treat people. We wait and wait and wait.

I was happy, positive and having great expectation in my future when the radiologist told me the mammogram of my remaining breast was suspicious and I needed to get a stereotactic biopsy during my 3 month follow up visit after radiation. Tears dropped in my eyes, my heart was broken. I just didn't understand why. I have been doing my best to be healthy. I start exercising, eat healthy, cook carefully, sleep better, relax more. I have been doing everything in my control to stay away from cancer. I just didn't get it. I was upset, the plan my husband and I have designed for our future is in jeopardy. We don't know how to handle our life if the biopsy is positive. Just when we are ready to move on.

Later that day after hardly swallowing the news, my feeling began to calm down. My mind started recalling so many stories about other people who were also facing difficulty in life they didn't understand why that happened. A child who was diagnozed with terminal illness, a pregnant mother who was told that her baby was abnormal, a family whose one of its members was very very sick. Inspite of the bitterness I saw they were living their life gracefully, they were able to squezed the juice of whatever life they were facing. They were able to live their life inspiring others.

Tonight just after the biopsy this morning, with the preliminary result will only be available tomorrow afternoon, I start putting my hope together again. I will not let the biopsy result shatter my great expectation of what lies ahead for me. I don't want to wait for anything to get the best of my life. Whatever it is, it is the life God has given me. Let it be my present that I enjoy now.

A Flashback that will Bring Me to the Future

I was breastfeeding my 6 month old baby when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was thirty six years old. My eldest son was just 3 year and 2 month old and my marriage was not even 5 years long.

Yet, I wasn't too shocked when the doctor told me the result of the biopsy. Somehow I knew something was not right when we (my husband and I) discovered the big mass in my left breast. I did cry but not much. I knew I was strong enough to handle this.

On the next doctor visit, I told the doctor about a lump in my armpit so he ordered another biopsy on that site. I knew something else was going to come out. And yup the cancer had spread to the lymph node. After  many more exhausting tests they said it was a stage 3C and the treatments would include 16 rounds of chemotherapy, mastectomy with axillary nodes dissection and 6 weeks of radiation.

The first thing my husband and I thought was how we would manage our life when I was going through the treatment. We're both more of practical persons, not really the emotional ones. Off course we were sad but we had a baby and a toddler to take care of so we're like let's work things out. Hence, the first thing in our mind was how should we do this? Who would take care of the children? All of our families were in Indonesia. We moved to the USA only less than 3 years ago. We didn't have lots of friends here. Asking them to temporarily take care of a toddler was sensible but a 6 month old baby? We knew that would be too much.

So we came to a decision that we had to send our baby back to Indonesia so our parents could take care of her. That's when my heart was broken. I was devastated. She was so little, so pure, so beautiful, why should she have to be separated from us, her parents? Why she couldn't be raised the same way her brother was? Why I couldn't kiss her chubby cheeks, smell her fragrant silky skin, hold and cuddle her anymore? The tears only stopped when our rationality took over the emotion. We believed she would be better off being under our parents' constant and stabil care than staying with us with uncertain condition.

From then on I was strong. The chemotherapy and everything that went with that was alright. Loosing my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, having dark nails, nausea, vomitting, were ok. I was ready. The surgery went well. Loosing one of my breast, a whole bunch of lymp nodes, never really bothered me. The radiation was done and I was lucky my skin, eventhough became darker, was not painful. No blister whatsoever. I knew I was strong. I could take whatever it was to regain my health.

However yesterday when I read an article about living with cancer in the perspective of a boy whose father passed away because of cancer when he was just 11 year old, I was saddened. My heart sank. I never knew how children's life would be affected after seeing their parent dying in front of their own eyes. I never thought that it would be a terribly horribly frigthening endless nightmare. How scared they would be. How their once beautiful world would turn upside down. How painful it would be that it would leave a scar in their heart forever. I was saddened. I don't want my kids to experience that. I want them to feel secured, safe and happy. I want to watch them grow, be by their sides, share their dreams, be their rock. This time I know more than ever that I need to STAY STRONG.