Have I reached the age of maturity? Not the wrinkled skin and greying hair kind, but the sudden forced maturity that happens when you find out your child is dying.
“Do you think this is funny?” Rece, my daughter, explodes from the hospital bed while I stand in silence, stroking her arm, teetering in disbelief, outraged and blindsided, fighting back tears. I think: “She’s only 28 so maybe it isn’t so. He could be wrong, right?” I’m the older one and should be the victim, I think, not my young daughter. She comes from good genes. One grandmother is 100 and the other is 94, so how does this happen? They both wish they could trade places with her, as do I. Be strong and carry on … it seems so trite, but this becomes my new mantra.anti-cancer memes. Friends of ours won the Princess Margaret Cancer Hospital lottery a few years back; a grand prize of a home, a cottage, a new car and cash.
Now at a second hospital, the girl who once winced at having a COVID shot, lies in the bed with a colostomy that no longer works, a catheter attached to each kidney. An experimental PTEG tube runs from her stomach out through her neck so that excess fluids and air can escape. This replaced the “uncomfortable” NG tube that ran from her stomach out through her nose. She has a permanent “port” below her collar bone once used for chemo infusions and is now attached to a narcotic pain pump.