Everyone has been given some disappointing news in their lifetime, but how much can one person take? They always say, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” or “God only gives us what we can handle.” But sometimes you question if it’s really so and if you have the strength to face these tests.
Monday night I came home from school expecting the usual: my parents having a conversation in front of the television set and my sister chattering away on her cell phone. But this week, something felt different. The house was quiet; so quiet it was almost eerie.
My parents and my sister were sitting in front of the television whispering, but the television wasn’t even turned on. With my stomach turning into knots, I dared to ask if everything is O.K. My mom told me to have a seat. By now, I knew my gut feelings were on target.
She tells me that there’s some bad news. At this point, my head begins to spin. I didn’t know what to expect. “The tumor is back,” my mom says as she tries to hold back the tears. Not sure if I registered what she said, I just sit there in a state of shock. Not one word or one tear came out. It was only after she reached over to hold my hand that I started to cry and found myself not being able to stop.
Memories of my mom begin to run through my head as the tears continue to stream down my face. Memories of fun-filled days shopping at the mall, memories of birthdays and mother’s days, and memories of just sitting on the couch telling each other our stories were on replay in my head.
You see, several years ago the doctors found a tumor in her leg, but after surgery we were told it was fully removed. A few weeks ago, my mom felt sharp pains in her leg, but was informed that it wasn’t necessarily a tumor. They began to run more tests. After several days, the pain in her leg stopped, but it seemed to have moved to her hip and lower back. It was then that she was told a tumor had grown in her hip.
How are we supposed to react to such terrible news?
For me, the hospital seems like it has become a second home. When my dad was a child, the doctors believed that he had asthma, giving him an inhaler to take. It wasn’t until a few years ago that the doctors realized it was really an irregular heartbeat.
By that time it was almost a little too late. During my junior year of high school, my father was close to being pronounced dead.
His heart stopped beating for a full two minutes before they could revive him. Now all he can do is take medication for the rest of his life because his heart is too large to be operated.
With nothing more than a few pills to take here and there, my dad often has trouble breathing or gets chest pains which cause him to be frequently in-and-out of emergency rooms.
And now with my mom, it all seems too familiar.
It is during times like these, that you wish you were the one in pain and not your loved ones. You wish on everything in the world that you can take their pain away.
It is also at times like these, where a family’s love is strong enough to get through troubling times. My mom, sister and I helped my dad get through his heart problem, and now it’s my dad’s, sister’s and my job to help my mom get through this.
But it is also during times like these, where we have to remember those two clichés.
Nila Priyambodo, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at npriyambodo@ulv.edu.
