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Pravin Kumar
Age: 63 Zodiac: 
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 Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:46 am |
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It began with my observation to my sister that our beautiful, rosy-cheeked mother was looking pale. I remember trying to keep the panic out of my voice, but I was certainly feeling it. Something was obviously wrong with Mom, and I was wondering whether Ruthie had noticed it, too.
She had.
And so began our unwelcome and painful waltz with our ninety-five-year-old mother’s first real siege with serious illness. My sister and I had been so blessed: not only had we had our mom all these years, we’d had a healthy, vigorous and spunky mom to boot.
So this sudden and precipitous immersion into new and wondrous terms like “mass” and “metastasis” and “chemotherapy” was like walking on the moon for two dazed daughters.
Never before in all our decades as sisters had Ruthie and I been as sorely tested. Instead of filling our lives with family, work and small indulgences, we were now frantically comparing schedules. Who would take Mom to the oncologist? The pulmonologist? The gastroenterologist? The next CAT scan?
Who would try to decipher the internist’s last cryptic message? And which one of us would start the “new normal” routine of scheduling nurse’s aides when we couldn’t be with our ailing mother?
Mom herself was amazing: unflappable, determined and still talking about when she could resume her aerobics—yes, aerobics. Just like her daughters, illness was a vast foreign country to her.
The sibling congeniality lasted for a few weeks, and then came the truly rough decisions that would test our bonds of sisterhood like nothing ever had.
Sitting in a hospital lounge on those awful molded plastic chairs, we faced a curt and cool young physician who gave us the ultimatum: Mom needed a form of chemotherapy to arrest the tumor that was growing in her chest, and she needed it soon. Without it, there was almost no hope for survival. By now, Mom herself was too weak and too confused to make the decision herself.
Two sisters who used to fight over sweaters and whose turn it was to use the car were suddenly looking our mother’s terminal illness square in the face . . . and, in the process, resurrecting old ghosts.
I’m the fearful, pathologically squeamish sister, the one who hid her face when the little girl next door came home after an accident with her arm in a cast.
Ruthie is the tough cookie, stalwart, stoic and, yes, stubborn. But rational, wise and strong, too.
“We can’t put her through this,” I insisted when the doctor outlined the possible side effects. “Let her go in peace.”
“We have to consider it,” argued my sister.
I will never, ever forget that conversation, which quickly turned into an awful, debilitating argument. I will never forget the pain I felt about what was slipping away that night, and it was not only our mother. It was also two sisters who had faced so much together but now were up against the one thing we couldn’t solve with a conversation and a hug. Not this time . . .
When it was clear that nothing could be settled in that stifling little space with the young doctor tapping his foot in impatience, we decided to sleep on it all.
As we went our separate ways, I looked back once and saw my sister walking down the street with her usual purposeful stride. I barely made it to the car before breaking down in wracking sobs.
The next morning, I knew what I was going to say. “It’s up to you,” I told my big sister. “YOU decide.”
And suddenly, across area codes, I heard Ruthie laugh. “Those were going to be my exact words to you,” she said.
And somehow, that laughter was both a balm and a clarifier. Suddenly, we could talk without the awful tension and anger of the night before.
Our decision: Mom would have the antibody treatment, not because we thought she should, but because it’s what she would have chosen if she were well enough to make choices.
I suppose, by most standards, I, the sister who really didn’t want to subject Mom to the treatment, “lost.”
But, oh how I won when after three treatments, Mom started rallying. After four, she was almost her old self.
And six months after my sister and I had faced our toughest sister test, our mom was back to her aerobics class.
For now, we can rejoice in this gift of her dramatic improvement. Ruthie and I keep taking pictures of our mother to preserve forever the good fortune of the here and now.
And there’s nothing quite as wonderful as celebrating blessings . . . with a sister.
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