In Continuum.

Words like "Mitosis", "lymphoma","Apoptosis" and "Nasopharynx" stared back at me from the hospital report this afternoon, words that I have only heard before in medical dramas. It's true that House teaches you a thing or two about deadly diseases, though you never actually think that it'd be of any practical use in your own life. That is, of course, until something horrible like this happens in yours, then you start to do research on them over the internet, just to see how serious the situation is. I took upon the job to decipher the report on my own because my mother was taking way too long with a fifteen year old dictionary and a magnifying glass to magnify the words. Reading the report (which was in English) also gave me a chance to understand the situation better, and I suppose that is a way for me to get over things and to move on. Of course, it is much easier said than done for the most part, but I suppose we are all trying our very best. It's strange how a death sentence could be read to you, despite not knowing any of the words written in it. Of course, this isn't a guarantee that death is imminent, but I am just uncomfortable with being this close to it, with the possibilities being this great. 

There are times when I like the odds to be too big to consider, it's kind of like the odds of being struck by lightning or be bitten by a shark. There are times when I feel safe while being hidden behind big numbers. But cancer, you know how it is, it is slow poison implanted into our body, by ourselves, over time. You never know when it is going to strike, and you'd be lucky enough if you discover it early. I am guessing the words "low grade" in the report points to it being in the early stages, and that'd be a mildly comforting thought on my part. My aunt is taking him back to the hospital for a MRI next week, and we are all hoping for the best. The best case scenario would be a localized portion of the tumor, which would mean that a simple surgery would do the job, clean and easy. What you don't want is to have the cells spreading to other organs in your body, you want it to be localized so that you can cut it out. Things are still unclear at this point, but I suppose we are all making silent adjustments to the situation, hoping for the best and expecting the worst. To be honest, I am pretty sure that I am going to want to cancel my trip back home, only because of the realities of things that I have to face. Yes, that'd be running away; and yes, that'd be turning my back on life. But forgive me, I am not reading to leave the comfort of my bed to answer death's call at the front door just yet. 

It's strange, I am not even that worried about my uncle. I mean, he has always been the kind of person to laugh out loud in the face of life. He has always been a strong-willed person, someone who stands firm to his beliefs, someone who cuts to the chase and hates the whining. It is the people around him that I am worried about mostly, like my aunt for example. I always imagine that the greatest toll a disease could cause is always on the family members somehow, the ones that get left behind. Keep in mind that I am periodically knocking on wood as I am typing this entry, but it still doesn't change the fact that I am worried more for my aunt more than anybody else. To have been married for that long without children, to have been with the same man for so long, I suppose their lives are intertwined more than a lot of people out there. It is worse that all she has would be a dog to be with, if anything were to go wrong. I am not sure if she'd be able to take it very well, and my mother knows that. It is always the people who get left behind that I am the most worried about, and it just sucks to know that there isn't much you can do to prevent things from happening. Death is inevitable, and there isn't a better way to receive it at all. 

Though death is always the same no matter how you see it, the method in which somebody dies is always different. I found myself asking myself, why cancer? Why must it be such a merciless disease that takes so much toll on the body? It is a horrible disease, the way that it eats away at a person's body and his spirits. I have seen pictures of my late grandmother in the hospital, turning into a semblance of a human with just skins and bones. It was a disturbing sight, one that I still have nightmares about, truth be told. Still, you have to keep telling yourself that it is inevitable, and not everybody gets the easy way out by dying in your sleep. It is, by far, better than hearing about a relative being involved in a horrific accident, because things could have very well been done to prevent such a thing from happening. Maybe if he took a little longer to leave the house, maybe if he wasn't talking on the cellphone when it happened, maybe if it wasn't raining that night on the highway, maybe if he didn't have to leave the house in the first place. I suppose when it comes to this form of death, it is much harder to bear and it hits you much harder. You don't have the preparations, you don't know what to do. You are left hanging in a limbo with nothing to hold on to. At least we have time on our side, time to figure out the next move. We don't have a gun held to our head and told to move the next piece on the chessboard. We have time, we have time. 

As much as I have blogged about death itself, nothing really prepares you for it, now does it? We are, after all, talking about a very close family member, someone who is as good as being a second father to me. I, personally, am probably alright with the idea of it. Like I said, it is always the people that get left behind whom I am more worried about. There isn't a good time to hear about such things, bad news never have good timing for the most part. You just have to keep the ball rolling at times, knowing that life does not stop when you do. It just keeps moving, and you have to keep moving along with it. I dearly hope that everything is going to turn out OK with him in the end, that he is going to emerge out of this experience and then laugh at everybody for being so worried and paranoid. I can picture that happening, but I still worry for his health. So, a perfect Christmas gift would be the strength for my aunt and my uncle to get over this ordeal as soon as possible. Because really, there really isn't a thing in life that I want more than them to be rid of this burden that is sitting invisibly on their shoulders. I have been avoiding phone calls for the most part, trying hard not to think about things. I suppose that is my way of hiding the burdens on my shoulders, too.