The Cabbage Patch Gurl

Life has been happening.

The past couple days have been such a whirlwind. My younger brother, the nicest guy I ever got to know (whose actually a couple years older than me but I made him into my ‘little brother’ four years ago and I can’t help but feel like his protective older sister) got back in touch with me after about two years of losing touch because he needed to see if I could help him. Over the last two days I’ve been getting to learn more about the woman he married one and a half years ago and the story has gradually become clearer about how this dear 26-year-old girl has metastatic cancer that seems to have taken over her liver and now their doctor has told them there’s nothing more they can do.

Day 1 of knowing this: Found out all the essential details I could think of and considered who I could contact. Felt a lot more indifferent then what I thought I would feel like considering the fact that my brother was basically telling me that his wife was dying.

Day 2 of knowing it. Woke up in the morning and felt like throwing up. I cried, louder and harder than I’d ever cried before, as if the world was ending, as if there was nothing left to be happy about, as if my dear little brother’s world was shattering around him. And really it was.

But the crying had to end, the tears had to run out, the thoughts had to give way to something more than the despair of knowing that nothing could change what had already happened.

Day 3. I finally learnt what it feels like to be at the other side of the fence. All of a sudden I wasn’t the medical student walking with a team of doctors at the research hospital and meeting another patient who was part of yet another cancer clinical trial. Now I was the desperate friend calling doctors who seemed like experts on this rare tumor, now I was describing to the umpteenth research nurse what had happened in the past 4 months of this poor girl’s life and trying to see if there was a way we could get second opinions soon. Now I was the one watching the clock tick, twiddle my thumbs in front my phone, and check the dial tone to figure out why no one was returning my calls yet.

Now I was the one silently preparing myself for the whole range of options – maybe things could work out, maybe they won’t. Maybe there was still hope left in terms of cures, or maybe there wasn’t much at all. Maybe it was time to accept the dismal prognosis, or maybe it wasn’t and this was still the time to keep fighting it.

I don’t know what’ll happen. We’re still trying, we’re still calling people, we’re still hoping for the best, we’re still searching for second opinions. This story continues to unfold with each day so much so that there just isn’t time to waste feeling all sad about it – there’s work to be done.

And it suddenly struck me that I think I do want to be an oncologist or an infectious disease doc. I feel like it just might give my life the meaning that I’ve searched for for a long time.