Wednesday, November 13, 1996
CANCER:
Road to cure illuminates importance of family, belief in GodA
very short while ago, my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor, a
meningioma to be exact. It was benign, but had grown to about the
size of a golf ball, situating itself several inches above her left
eye.
One evening, she and my father were relaxing at home, when my
mom had a seizure, collapsing onto the floor. My dad called an
ambulance that whizzed her to John Muir hospital, which, luckily,
has one of the finest intensive care units in the nation. An
angiogram and a subsequent MRI revealed the frightful truth: it was
indeed a brain tumor.
I returned home very late that night and was greeted by a slew
of messages from my dad, telling me to call my house no matter what
time I got back. "A family emergency," the notes said.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to convey my agony and the
depth of my despair upon hearing the news. My life and the future
of my family had seemingly crumbled in a heartbeat. Everything
which I had previously assumed to be rock-solid and unshakable
truths  namely, the health and stability of my family Â
evaporated instantaneously. Before that moment, the possibility of
anyone in my immediate family dying seemed so remote and
incomprehensible that I had difficulty even fathoming it. Yet there
it was, staring me in the face. And I was totally helpless to stop
any of it.
It is at times such as this when it is easiest for one to lose
faith, yet at the same time, faith becomes so important.
At first, I’ll be honest, my faith was shaken considerably, to
the point where I seriously doubted the existence of God.
Throughout my whole life I had felt His presence, and my
relationship with God was one that grew and fortified itself with
every event and relationship in my life. I had been blessed with a
healthy family, loving parents; indeed, the ideal foundation for
any child.
My father is the most rational and level-headed person I have
ever known. When my dad was telling me of her condition, he started
crying. As long as I’ve lived, I had never heard my father cry, and
the grief that he conveyed with his tears at that moment shook me
to the bone. I was shivering and crying as well and actually threw
up after the phone call.
How could God, a seemingly benevolent, loving presence, allow
such misery to exist on Earth? Not since I was in Israel, at the
Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, had I experienced anything similar.
Yet this catastrophe was happening in my own family at this very
moment, and I was helpless to prevent it.
The basic tenets of Judaism hold that God created nature and
then man. It follows logically then that all men, because they
sprung from God and nature, are inherently connected on a spiritual
level. For the first 19 years of my life, it was very comforting
for me to know that I could never be alone in the world, for
between myself and every other human, our existence sprung from the
same source, and we were thus intimately and spiritually
connected.
Yet my father’s tears, and the horrible news that they were
conveying, made me, for a brief while, doubt the existence of God.
The results of my temporary loss of faith were bone jarring. If God
does not exist, then man’s existence is reduced to strictly
biological terms. I was an organism among other organisms drifting
around with no connection to the outside world. For the first time
in my life, I felt truly alone in the world. Every spiritual and
emotional connection that I had with other humans had evaporated. I
sat in class, numb and scared. My professor’s words simply bounced
off of me, floating away into the air. A veil separated me from
everything else. Words, phrases, conversations and people seemed so
distant and foreign.
And 500 miles away my mom lay, doped up on anti-convulsives and
sedatives, hanging on. That day was the hardest I have ever had to
endure.
One of the nation’s finest neurological surgeons would soon be
operating on my mom. Dr. Chen had graduated summa cum laude from
Harvard University as an undergraduate, then summa cum laude from
Yale Medical School, completing 10 years of medical training. He is
one of the foremost authorities on neurological surgery in the
nation.
He told my dad the following: "I am sure that you’ve heard of
the expression, ‘It isn’t brain surgery.’ Well, this really is
brain surgery. The tumor is situated in such a place such that its
removal may involve coming dangerously close to a part of the brain
which deals with language, motor skills and memory." These words
were chilling, and as the full ramifications of the surgery became
more clear, things seemed grim.
It was at this point, when hopelessness and misery seemed to
beckon, that I realized the importance of faith. Cancer was living
in my mom’ s head, and to me, nothing worldly could alter that
fact.
As the wonders of modern medicine became known to me, I could
begin to see and feel God’ s presence once again, and hope revived
itself in my heart.
Modern medicine is indeed a miracle in itself. To remove the
tumor involved a multi-step process. The first process, which I
can’t even remember the name of, involved inserting in the arm, a
wire which migrates up through the veins and to the brain, where it
restricts the flow of blood to, and only to, the tumor. Over half
of the tumor is killed in this way. This portion of the surgery
lasted eight hours or so and was a complete success.
The next step involves what one normally thinks of as "brain
surgery." Microscopic portions of the tumor are removed piece by
piece. This step in the surgery can take anywhere from eight to 28
hours to complete. This phase of the surgery met with the same
success as the first. The rest, as they say, is uphill from here. A
long road to recovery awaits, but the worst has no doubt
passed.
My mom’ s brush with death yields many valuable lessons. During
her darkest hour, her love for my dad, my brother and I were what
kept her going. After she had awakened from the surgery and the
effects of the anesthesia had worn off, she said that it was her
love for us that had kept her sane and positive in her darkest
hour. Our love was a life raft that kept her afloat in a sea of
despair, suffering and agony, when "giving up" seemed so easy. When
life itself seemed in doubt, the power of my family’s love provided
the strength she needed to survive.
As of this writing, I had this conversation with my mom about
two hours ago, so her words are still fresh in my head. To know
that the mutual love that exists between my mom and I, and between
my mom and the rest of my family, is what gave her the courage to
remain strong in the face of a life-threatening brain tumor, is one
of the greatest feelings that any human can ever hope to
experience.
Any lapses of faith which I had experienced during the ordeal
were washed away with these words. God had watched over my mom in
her time of need and rescued her from the jaws of death. My faith
in God gave me the strength to remain strong and optimistic during
these dark hours. Had any of my family succumbed to the pervasive
misery and doubt surrounding my mom’s situation, then there is no
question in my mind that the results would not have been so
positive. God supported me and the rest of my family, and it was
this support which made survival possible.
I learned that faith, family and love are the most important
things that one possesses on this earth. Every thing else just
fades away in comparison. As a mountain of midterms awaits me,
school seems so trivial, and my perspective on life and my goals
for the future now have a newfound clarity.
Her courage and perseverance through one of the most trying
experiences any human being could ever endure gives me great
confidence in accomplishing the seemingly great hurdles that I am
sure to encounter in the future.
While it is difficult to imagine any good arising from cancer,
this experience has certainly taught me many things about the
importance of faith, family and love.