“Someone I love is fighting with cancer”
These were the words I started my first post with in the series “Tales of Life & Death,” on December 2nd, 2018.
It hit us like a brick. We had gathered in Jakarta to celebrate my brother’s wedding, when just one day earlier we received the diagnosis that it’s late-stage cancer, terminal, with a prognosis of 6-9 months.
2.5 years have passed since that diagnosis, time we didn’t think we’d have when we learned about it the first time, but time we are tremendously grateful for. The situation, however, remains serious. The cancer has spread, from the lungs to other parts of the body – metastatic as they say. In the words of a somewhat heartless doctor recently “it’s stage 4 cancer, what do you expect?”
To summarize life over the past 2.5 years: endless doctor visits, scans, opinions, calls, more opinions, bad news here, good news there, needles, tubes, surgery, fever, infection, hospitalization, oxygen machine, pills, more pills, nurses, bad hospital food, CT scan, PET scan, and so on, and so forth. Well, that’s for the patient.
And for me? Quit my job, leave China, return to Germany, realize we have more time, return to China to resume life, fly back every other month, then leave China, consider jobs in Germany, end up in the US, but don’t get an apartment so you can be flexible, fly back, stay for multiple months at a time, work 6pm to 2am to match Pacific Time while in Europe, live out of your suitcase, go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, feel depleted.
It’s been a tough 2.5 years. It’s been tough for the patient, for the family, and it’s been tough for me personally. It has cost me relationships, as much as it has cost me my stability and some degree of my sanity. But at the end of the day, it’s the price to pay to be with someone whose clock is ticking. Putting others first often comes with a sacrifice, and I know we are all making these sacrifices. I also know that as tough as it is, I will look back grateful for the sacrifices I made, and yet wonder if I should have done more.