Pain of Cancer

Very recently my family has witnessed the darkest and the most dangerous disease the mankind has ever come across – Cancer and that to by a person; who was too much afraid of even the injection needle of a doctor - My mother.

Yes, my mother has got a Cancer. She is a fighter to Cervical Cancer. The first time I saw the ugly face of what a human can tolerate, worse than hell, may be more painful than pain itself.

Just on a very important juncture of my life’s time my mother was diagnosed with Cervical Cancer – stage 4B. I remember the exact moment… the happiness that I just celebrated disappeared… Mom’s voice and the numb feeling that enveloped me. That feeling has never left. I’ll also never forget how she looked into my eyes and held my hand. “Will I be alright?” Now, that was the most difficult question ever asked to me. The first realization of how tiny a man kind is? How helpless a son can be to his mother? The question I wish could have never been asked to me.

With each challenge we grew close. Words became less important. One night she had just been admitted to the hospital, her pain was out of control. She grabbed my brother’s arm, her eyes watering, “Can you please kill me here, that’s the only way I can handle this pain.” “I can’t bear it more, please kill me.” She continued.

Stunned, silence all around, my eyes were full with water, throat full with air and I was not able to speak even a single word. I could feel the darkness my mother was experiencing. The grey pain that was growing deeper and deeper inside her was screaming violently in her suffering. We cried almost every drop of tear available because we loved with every bit of our souls. She taught me to love, to listen, to give and to believe in others and myself. But that day she didn’t believe me or herself, not my dad, not my brother, not the doctor or…. not anyone.

Throughout our battle we were fortunate to have a strong support group but we still struggled to get people to understand our day-to-day life and the difficulties we faced. Mom was in chronic pain from the side effects of treatment and medications. Hospital stays of 10-plus days were not uncommon. Frequent chemotherapy doses led to the mental dilemma intolerable. Fear, anxiety and worries were constant.

Sadly, most people do not want to hear these realities and at certain points we felt our support fading away. People assume that treatment makes you better, that things become OK, that life goes back to “normal.” However, there is no normal in cancer-land. Cancer survivors have to define a new sense of normal, often daily. And how can others understand what we had to live with everyday?

Our experience showed us many things. We have seen the humanized face of life and many inhuman things too. We saw the challenge, difficulty, fear, sadness and loneliness that we faced, that my mother faced, as she battled this disease. Most important of all, we saw the battle, battle to survival, battle against pain…. The battle that does not define us, but that is us.

The real hero within my mother, I saw, is ‘a strong desire to live’. But that too was knelled down to the pain. The inner instinct that kept her struggling seemed surrendered to the mighty pain.

Now, she has found her own way of living with her pain. She loves every bit of hope she finds around, she saves every drop of tears for those painful moments; she shares happiness with her heart hiding from the world to muster all smiling moments. That she never wants the world to look at her with sympathy, not even the mirror she faces. That has been her new way of fighting, may be surviving...!

This may be the case with every cancer survivor. But the best about everyone is their spirit to fight back. To fight back the mightier pain that a simple human being is incapable of handling it. That surviving spirit speaks volumes. Brace yourself.

May be someday the medical science will win over this devil and may be this surviving spirit will triumph over the demon – pain. Hope this world will be cancer (pain) free someday.

Adieu…!