I was gifted a beautiful orchid from work for my birthday the year before Ro’i got sick. Now, for those who know me I am possibly the worst person to give any plants to. I have this knack of ruining them. Give me flowers, OK. I love them. And at some point you expect those flowers to wilt and you can just throw them away (or recompost them or whatever…). But plants no, I just never had a green finger and none would really survive. I was so surprised then, when it actually did last not just one month, but many many months – in full bloom, blossoming beautifully. One day though I noticed the petals falling off, just like that; one by one until there were no buds left, or petals or color. It looked lifeless. And wondering if there was some small message in there, soon after the orchid appeared to have no life in it, we got the diagnosis that Roi had cancer.
I left the orchid alone for a while, and dealt with the tsunami that was our lives. As time past however when I was home from hospital, I would frequently look at this lifeless orchid and just give it water – part of some therapeutic ritual I suppose. I did this for the entire year. Towards the end of that year, I started to notice small tiny buds appearing on the main stem of the plant. Somehow, the plant had started to revive itself and by the time Roi’s cancer treatment was finished, the plant was in full bloom again.
Finishing cancer treatment is much like this orchid because even though the buds have flowered, I still need to take care of it just like before – giving it love and water to keep it blooming. When you are receiving cancer treatment everyone understands that things are hard. How can they not be? You’re living life half in the hospital, and half bound to your home, nursing your sick kid. When the cancer treatment is finished, you realize that our special “flower” still needs to be provided with much care and attention, just like when it was being revived.
So when you complete the last chemotherapy session, and are given the results of that MRI showing no regrowth, it is not with the sense of relief most lucky people, who are fortunate to never experience this, would like to think. I never opened up the champagne, I never danced any dance and I never felt this big sense of relief. We were just given, “There are no signs of cancer on the MRI which is great news, but his brain has obvious scars around the site of the operation.” And just like that – we didn’t return to our normal lives. We don’t even know what that is anymore.
As the doctor told us, “It will never be a normal MRI.” And our lives, I supposed will never be the same normal that it was pre-cancer. And we’ll have to live with the knowledge that it will never be a normal MRI…
And what does the even mean, in real terms? It means that his brain is going to be working for a very, very long time trying to recover every part of it that was damaged.
It means – as the eye doctor said to me the other day after looking at Roi’s eyes (his eyes gave the first sign of his brain tumor), “His eyes have been affected by the surgery and tumor, nothing obvious to anyone who isn’t a professional, but I can see the effects and the eyes and brain trying to make a recovery.”
It means – he still cannot walk properly, even like a healthy two year old who has already mastered this skill. As I was reminded a few weeks back, when sitting with my son in the committee to verify the fact that he is still a “nacheh” – a person with a disability. The doctor, a very sweet pediatrician, looked at me and delicately asked, “I don’t see his rehabilitation doctor written this, but how long do they expect it to take him to fully recover his walking?” I could only answer, with the realization of the fact that “they just don’t know”.
It means – that every time you go somewhere new with your child in his walker or wheelchair, at least for now, that it is like you’re turning on this loud boombox with music blaring at full volume. Only with a disability, the full volume music is deadly silent as everyone stops to stare. As it occurred when I took Roi to the eye doctor – to the same doctor I took his sister to two weeks before, and where I’ve taken his other sister to at least half a dozen times. The difference is that when I walked in with his sisters, no one batted an eye. They carried on talking to their kids, looking at their phones, reading – we were just regular mom and kid. However when I walked in with Roi, every pair of eyes in the room, both young and old, fell on him, his hair grown so not obvious to anyone that he was a cancer kid. He is just a kid now using a walker.
It means – that from now until forever, we will be going from one specialist to the next, checking his growth, his hearing, the strength of his bones, for those dreaded MRIs, and more.
And so – this is the “after” the cancer treatment is finished. Nothing is normal. Nothing is easy. Nothing is as it was before, but the buds have renewed themselves and the petals have opened. They still need constant love and attention, as they did when they were trying to revive themselves. And we are just so grateful for their beauty and for this precious gift.
