The cancer specialist (doctor) came the next day and instructed the hospital staff to give the first dose of anti-cancer drugs or chemotherapy to my mother. The syringes and bottles of drugs have been mixed and prepared. Intravenous fluids hang by the IV stand and the medications were then given through a vein.
Few more days and it would be Christmas time. All of my family members, with the little siblings included and relatives came to visit her. We celebrated Christmas inside the hospital. It was my first time to spend Christmas outside our home. There was a small chapel in the hospital where we thanked and prayed for my mother’s surgery. Our Christmas gift for that year was mother. 29 Christmas years passed by, I realized that she was the best gift ever that our family had received. Her surgery didn’t have complications but we stayed past new year’s day for more medications that can be given only inside a hospital. On January 3, 1978, mother was discharged from the hospital and we walked straight home since the hospital was just a block away.
The chemotherapy was continued the next day in the outpatient clinic. Another drug named adriblastina was added and given, and she started losing hair fast. She was prepared for this side effect so it didn’t bother her. She knew it was from the drug.
My mother, being the major breadwinner in the family, resumed work in our small restaurant after a brief 2-week rest only. She worked right away, as if she only had a tooth extraction, like nothing major happened to her. She was thinking of all the bills to pay that she missed while in the hospital. She would sit quietly and compute the rent, water, electric bills, the tuition fees, and her employees’ salary. She resumed her daily life normally since she was confident that she had been cured by the surgery and that the chemotherapy was just to keep the cancer cells at bay. So she got busy with work trying to catch up with the missed days as she squeezed in time for her chemo appointments and we’d just walk to the clinic.
At the Cancer clinic waiting room, my mother met 8 more people with same cancers as she had. They showed each others stitches on their belly and talked about their chemo. Mother was almost bald with few strands of hair only on the hairlines that she bought and started wearing a wig. We all tried and put her wig on and had lots of laugh and fun with it. Once, while in the clinic, she was asked to lay on the examining table, and with that her wig came off and fell on the floor and they all laughed. She then learned to put more clips so it wouldn’t fall off again.
Three months after, she attended the high school graduation of my other older sister. She was so happy that another child of hers is going to college. We celebrated in the evening at home as father took some pictures.
The clinic visits continued for another 3 more years. All these years, mother never failed to miss her chemo appointments. She was very compliant with the treatment plan. One time while at the cancer clinic waiting room, she noticed a friend missing. She asked the doctor’s secretary about her and she told mother that she passed away. One by one, her friends at the waiting room died. Others who were not doing well with their chemo transferred to the USA for better treatment. One patient who was also doing well with her chemo was transferred still to the USA by her doctor daughter. Her daughter looked down on our country’s treatment and hoped for a faster result but her mother just died instead.
After a year, she attended my younger sister’s grade school graduation day. The next year would be my turn to graduate from high school and my youngest brother’s grade school graduation, too! She was there and she was happy!
After 5 years of continued follow-up and chemotherapy, my mother’s doctor congratulated her and told her that she has passed the observation for survival period. “You have just graduated! We will now switch your intravenous medications to pills. But you will still have to come here for follow-ups,” her doctor happily told her.
The doctor commended her for making it pass the 5-year mark and for being an obedient, non-complaining person. My mother in return thanked him over and over again until it was time for us to leave.
