‘May we exist like the Lotus flower- easy in muddy water’ – Zen proverb

THERE I was once again being fed my chemo intravenously as I reclined in my chair, I was onto my sixth treatment and my upbeat demeanour had been replaced with a determined, let’s-get-this-over-with attitude. I was as fed up as a person could be in this situation, or so I thought.My sixth visit to the chemo room was marked by the presence of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Vitri, who no longer lives here in Guyana, but was visiting for the wedding of our mutual friend Ann, which was to take place later that week. I was happy that I would be able to attend the wedding just days after my chemo session, another upside to my new chemo drug Taxol. Don’t get it twisted though, I still suffered with the joint pain that had developed after my fifth cycle and even though it was less intense than when it started, climbing stairs could still be excruciatingly painful at times.
As Vitri and I laughed about our silly high school exploits such as skipping classes to play cards at the KFC (how teenagers had fun in our ‘time’, pokemon go-what? ) a patient was being made to lay down on a nearby bed, her IV was not connected as yet.
“Perhaps she has high blood pressure,” I offered Vitri as a possible reason why she was laying down and had not been treated as yet. “They [the Nurses] have to make sure your pressure and pulse rate are normal before they can administer the chemotherapy; sometimes they will tell a patient to relax for a few minutes or they will crack jokes with them to lighten up their mood, because most anxiety is mental anyhow”, I continued on with Vitri nodding in agreement.
Vitri started to respond but was abruptly cut off by the sounds of loud coughing from the patient on the bed. We both turned to her direction and were met with a sad smile from a girl around our age as she tended to the patient on the bed. We learnt that the patient was the girl’s mother after asking whether she was ok as the insistent cough persisted. It sounded as though it was coming from some place deep inside her body, every time she coughed her body convulsed violently; she had thus managed to say hello to Vitri and I before the cough took control of her body again. Her daughter explained that her mother — whose age I estimated to be close to late 40s, early 50s — had been diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago and was on treatment ever since. As we exchanged health information, the nurse came over and was able to set “Aunty’s” line.
I am in the habit of calling people I don’t know (in Guyana) but who are old enough to be my parents Aunty/Uncle unless otherwise asked not to. I have friends whose parents (non-Guyanese) prefer to be called by either their first name or their last- I always go for the last name because I have a problem calling elders “full mouth” as I believe is the colloquial term, since culturally we’re taught that it hints at disrespect.
“Aunty’s” coughing was less intense but she started to groan in pain. Stomach cramps, her daughter explained, before she left the room to get her mother some coconut water. The intensity of the cramps seemed to fluctuate and she was also able to have a longer dialogue with me with less interruptions from her respiratory system. Aunty offered me words of encouragement and strength, I was taken aback that this woman was looking straight at me — no eyebrows, no eyelashes,hair completely gone and racked by intense pains every few minutes– and telling me that I would be fine and to keep my spirits up, “Do not give up,” is what she said. She had completed eight cycles of chemotherapy just the year before, but this year it was found that it had spread to her stomach and thus required more chemo. I could not begin to imagine what she was going through. What a remarkable human being — suffering herself, but being more concerned about how I felt.
Even though I never saw “Aunty” after that day, her words “do not give up” stayed with me, not because they were particularly profound, in fact, they could probably be found in my cancer-diplomacy article, but because these words came from a place of almost hopelessness, these words went against everything I saw its speaker go through. These were seeds of hope planted in a murky environment and much like the lotus I had to have faith they would bloom.