7 days ago, around this same time I received the news that changed my life for the second time.
7 DAYS BEFORE
As I arrive at the hospital, I start to feel nauseous; the smell of it makes me want to vomit. The same nurse as always is at the front desk saying the same lines: to wait for 10 minutes, the doctor is busy but he will come right away.
Being in the waiting room is what I hate the most. Sick people everywhere. I get them, their faces are grey, washed out, just a little bit of hope in their eyes whenever a doctor comes around. That is what hopitals tend to do to people.
When the doctor comes, he says the exact same things, and I answer with the same words “...good, the usual, being at home, yes, every morning,” It feels like a routine now. When he is doing the check up, he takes longer than usual. I don’t notice at first but my mom starts to worry and asks if everything is okay. The doctor takes a while to answer and says he has found something different and that they will need to run some tests just to make sure everything is fine.
We are eating in a restaurant nearby when my mom receives a phone call from the hospital. While she is talking she has this worried face and even though this is something she tends to do a lot, I feel scared. We ask for the check as soon as she hangs up the phone and go directly to the hospital.
As we arrive, the nurse says the doctor is waiting for us. She guides us to his office and when we arrive the doctor starts to say some words I can’t really understand. I am just able to focus on that one sentence that will probably stay in my head forever. “We made some tests and found out the tumor is back and this time it is really dangerous. But if we treat it immediately we can gain a few more weeks. If not, you’ll probably have about a week left.”
Those two options are all I have. I spend 20 minutes looking to nowhere thinking about whether or not to go on with the treatment when I finally decide what I want to do. I look up to the doctor and my mom and tell them I just want to go home. That I don’t want to go through with the treatment. They look at me astonished, but I’m sure about what I want.
I have been here before, and it sucked. It drained the life out of me I ended up emotionless, without wanting to do anything, without strength to enjoy life. I was alive but without a life to enjoy.
They try for a few minutes to convince me to take the treatment, that it will help me live a little longer, but that is not what I want, I don’t want a life where I can’t do anything, I’ve tried that. Instead, I want the opportunity to finally enjoy my last few days with the emotions I am supposed to feel, with the energy to wake up every morning and get out of bed, to enjoy the little things I wasn’t able to notice, to not be tired all day. To finally be able to have my life back, even if it means 7 days as the best option.
As the doctor and my mom finish trying to convince me, I turn to my mom. Put my hand on her knee and say, “please, this is my choice, I have been with treatments for years now, and you always have chosen for me, just for once, for the last time, let me make my choice; is all I ask.”
A tear starts to run down my cheek and as I wipe it my mom just nods and holds me.
I could feel the pain inside of her. I know this isn’t her ideal choice. I know this isn’t easy for her, it never has been. All these years she has been the rock that has held me from not falling down. She’s breaking down as I am holding her. It is not fair for her. All I can do is hold her head and kiss her forehead as I tell her everything is going to be okay. I try to wipe away the tears running down her red cheeks, but they keep falling, one after another, and even though I try to be the rock now, the rock for her, like she has always been for me, I try but I just can’t. All I can say is I’m sorry and that’s when I can’t hold it back anymore and I cry everything I haven’t cried for the last three years.
6 DAYS BEFORE
As I wake up everything feels different. Knowing I’m living my last days does make a difference. While going down to the kitchen I can smell my favorite food, and just as I guessed there it is on the table ready to eat.
It feels like when you have taken the band-aid off, a relief. Because now we know how it is going to end, how I won’t have to worry everyday for the next years if my health is okay or not. No more unexpected hospital visits and ending up with awful news. Now we know the raw truth, and even though it might hurt knowing it, I take it as a relief. I am able to stop worrying and finally start living.
My mom asks if I have anything special I want to do for today, but the truth is, I haven’t really thought about it. Having a free day with the posibilities of doing anything you really want to, I haven’t been in that situation for a while . I tell her I haven’t thought of anything, but as soon as I know what to do, I’ll let her know.
After having that break down from yesterday with my mom at the hospital the hardest thing for me to do is tell the news to my best friend. I tried calling her yesterday but she didn’t answer, so I’ll go to her place after finishing breakfast.
As I knock on the door I’m thinking about what I need to tell her, and how I’m going to do that. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the words out. How exactly do I tell my best friend that there is a 99% chance that I will only have 6 more days of life? Anyhow, as her mom opens the door she yells that I’m here. Laurel comes down immediately and hugs me as always.
Frau Schmidt asks “Hallo, is everything okay?”
“No not really, that’s why I’m here, I need to tell Selina something really important” I say, “they invite me to come in and we go straight to her room. As we are sitting down on her bed I gasp for air. I don’t feel capable enough to do it. I don’t even know where to start. I just open my mouth with the hope of words coming out of it and it works.
“Yesterday I went to the doctor for my weekly checkup, but things turned up to be different than the usual,” I say. “They found out the tumor is back and this time is way more dangerous than the last time.”
I can see the fear in her eyes; she sits down and holds my hand.
She asks, “So what’s next? How’s the treatment?”
And that’s what breaks me again, I try to speak and words come out broken.
“The-there is no tre-treatment.”
She looks at me confused while her face turns pale and her eyes red. She starts crying and when she tries to speak I can barely understand her because at the same time, she is scared and concerned, crying and yelling.
“How? Why!? What do you mean? Is that what the Doctor told you? But why?” Selina says all at once.
I try to calm myself down, but knowing what I’m about to say next makes it almost impossible for me to do it. It takes me a while when I’m finally able to say a sentence without breaking down.
“Well there is another treatment, but it will only give me a few more weeks, but that’s the point. I don’t need a few more weeks being drugged by the medicine, without being able to do anything, having to be worried for the rest of my life if I’m going to be okay or not, not being able to have a normal life like you and everyone else, having to spend the majority of my time in bed, not because I want to, but because I have no other choice, because I don’t even have the strength to get out of bed and walk outside my house. I’ve been there. Three years ago, when I was first diagnosed, remember? I was throwing up blood every night. I wasn’t able to go to the parties because I wasn’t able to breathe. I wasn’t living, so now, after two and a half years of medication I’m the closest I’ll ever be to a normal life, and if I want to take this stronger treatment, just to gain a few more weeks, because it might not even save me, it will just make it slower, that will mean going back to feeling handicapped in every way. I’d rather enjoy these last days that I got. They say I probably will just have this week left,” I say.
Selina, trying to catch everything, just starts crying while hugging me like my mom did. She starts sobbing and saying words in between, but at the end just as I hoped for, she understands me. She may not agree with my decision but she supports the idea of me trying to live a normal life at last now.
3 DAYS BEFORE
Remembering what my life used to be before all of this makes me sad of how I didn’t appreciate it better back then. Sometimes I spend hours thinking of all the “what ifs” and “what coulds”. But by thinking that, instead of enjoying the last days I’ve got I only get more sad, so instead I’ve decided that whenever I catch myself doing it I’ll just think of anything I have ever wanted to do and do it in that same moment.
Like now, I’m thinking of how I used to go to pool parties with all my friends when we were younger, it’s one of the best memories I still have left. I didn’t need to worry about anything, whether it was for medicine or time, I was just there to enjoy the moment. We were all so young, just dancing and gossiping like everyone else. Staying up till midnight playing truth or dare.
Back then it all seemed so normal and I thought I could have that forever. I used to feel that the world was mine and that I would be able to do everything I ever wanted to. It’s ironic how things can change years later and the things that never bothered me, are now the ones that make it the most difficult to keep going.
After trying to stop thinking about it, I decide I want to go and have a picnic in Salzburg.
Salzburg is just an hour and a half away on train from München so it’s not that far even though it’s in Austria. I really like Salzburg because of the size of the city and the Altstadt is really beautiful. I go straight to the HauptBahnhof and take the first Bahn to Salzburg.
As I arrive its now raining stronger than before; I love it. I find the perfect spot and hang the umbrella in the trees to make myself a cave. As I’m hiding in my self-made cave I start to eat the fruits and snacks I bought on the way over. Everything is so peaceful and perfect.
I stare at the sky while lying down in the grass and as time goes by, I close my eyes and fall asleep. When I get up, I start to feel hungry again, and one thing I have never done that no one has ever forgiven me for not trying is the Weisswurst. It’s practically impossible to spend your whole life in München and never try it out. Because of that, I get up and try to find the first Biergarten to order it.
When I get there I ask the lady “Ein Weisswurst, bitte”
After eating the whole Wurst I feel proud of myself for doing it. As weird as it looked the Wurst tasted good and that surprised me.
Then back to home.
1 DAY BEFORE
The mosquitoes wake me up; we forgot to completely close the tent entrance. Yesterday, Selina and I decided to go camping; it’s something we used to do a lot when we were kids so we decided to do it again. We went to a forest nearby the city, it took us about 2 hours to get there. I love this place. So disconnected from everyone.
“Do you want to get in the lake?” I hear Selina yelling at me as she sees me waking up.
“I’ll be there in a second” I respond.
I change clothes to my swimsuit and go to the lake. The water is freezing cold but that is what makes it more challenging.
As I get in I hear Selina again yelling at me. “Hurry up, it’s delicious! I love cold water.”
I try to hurry but then I feel something stopping me. I try to ignore it but after a few seconds it appears again. As I arrive to where Selina is I don’t tell her anything, because I don’t want to worry her. I just want to be with her right now and enjoy the moment while it lasts.
After a while we get out of the lake and we prepare some food for breakfast. The food looks delicious but I can barely touch the food because it appears again, and with every bite I swallow, the pain gets stronger and stronger.
“Are you feeling okay?” she says
“Yeah, it was nothing, don’t worry about it,” I respond. I try to eat as much as I can.
After we finish we go hiking. She never really liked it but I loved it, and because I suggested it she agreed.
While walking up the hill, I feel more tired than usual. I gasp for air every time more frequently, but I try to hide it. If I tell her now, we would go straight back home and I don’t want that right now.
After a few minutes of being like that I start coughing. At first it was nothing unusual, but then, when I cover up my mouth with my hands I spill blood in them. I hide them immediately and try to clean them with a paper I find in my bag.
I knew this time would eventually come, when you know everything is failing inside of me, and even though I feel perfectly normal in my head, my body is a whole different thing. It’s frustating how I can be mentally fine but dying on the inside.
After getting back to the camp, I don’t feel okay at all. I try to act normal but I just can’t do it anymore. I lie in my tent and wait till the pain goes away, even if it’s a little. After a few minutes, nothing happens and Selina starts to notice that I’m not feeling well at all. She starts to get really worried about me asking me a lot of questions about how I feel, then I tell her how I really feel.
Without hesitations, Selina helps me get in the car and drives staight to my house where my mom is already waiting for me. During the whole ride back home, I feel worse, I cough blood every time more constantly and when I’m trying to clean myself I notice tears running down Selina’s cheek. I feel awful. Her being in that position is not easy or fair at all. She didn’t ask for it and she is one of the people who will suffer the most. I just hold her hand and say, “don’t worry, we are going to make it through,” even if it is on different paths.
THE LAST DAY
Waking up and seeing my mom lying on the couch next to my bed brings back bad memories. As I try to speak or move she notices right away and asks how am I feeling. I can barely make any sounds; my throat is sore because of all the coughing from yesterday. She hands me a glass with water and tells me to be careful and take it slow.
My whole body hurts, my head aches, and I can barely keep my eyes open.
I ask my mom, “where’s Selina? What happened?”
“She went home yesterday after you fell asleep, it was around 2 am. She was really worried about you; she didn’t know what to do. You should call her,” she answers while holding my hand.
As I call Selina she answers the phone right away and asks how did I wake up. I tell her I still haven’t gotten out of bed and my whole body still hurts. She is still worried about me; this morning she was supposed to have a road trip with her family, she says she was going to try and come back early to see me. She tells me by the phone that she is already on her way with her family, and maybe she would be coming back in the afternoon. I tell her to be careful and I’ll be waiting.
I spend the majority of my day in bed. Whenever I try to stand up to do anything my stomach and head starts to hurt, so I just lie in bed and read a book. My mom brings me food to my room and stays with me talking for a while.
I wish I could stop and rewind the time to the beginning of the week.
I feel like I’m being slefish for not chosing the treatment, that I’m just focusing on my happiness, and making the people who love me suffer. That thought has been in the back of my mind the whole week.
When the time comes I’ll go and the pain will end and I won’t have to worry about anything else, but what about my mom? What about Selina? They still need to deal with their lives after I am gone. They’ll have to live without me; I’m making them live without me, while all I will be doing is rest in peace. I don’t think that is fair for them, but I can’t keep thinking of this because the more I think about it, the more I feel guilty because there is nothing else I can do right now. I made a decision and I’m at the end of the road, so I can’t back down, not because of my pride or my feelings, but because it is too late, the other road is already way too far and all the options for me to get there are gone, so the only thing I can do right now is wait until I get to the end of this one, and ask for forgiveness for chosing my peace over their suffering. Which I am, I am really sorry for making them go through all this.
While the day is passing I am just getting worse and worse, and my mom is more worried than ever. If I close my eyes I feel that I won’t be able to open them again, and that scares me.
I take a paper out and start writing:
Dear mom,
I can’t thank you enough for what you have done for me. All the sacrifices you have been through to put my health first. I know it hasn’t been easy for you and that you have been at times where you don’t know what to do or if what you have done was the right choice; well I am telling you now, it has. I am still living and enjoying my last days thanks to you and that is something I always kept in my heart. I’m still living thanks to you. I know you weren’t happy with the choice I made and I know it has been extremely hard for you to accept it. You got to think that you did everything in your power to help me and I am more than thankful for that, but at the end, rather than living I was just a body breathing. Leaving you is what hurts the most, but I believe in you, I believe that you are going to be strong enough to go through it, just like you were strong enough to hold me and never let me fall. Don’t be sad when I’m gone, because I’ll never be. I will always be with you, in your arms, in your heart, in your mind. Just think of me and I’ll be there for you. Now it’s my time to watch over you and protect you from above. Don’t regret anything, you did everything you were able to. So thank you. Thank you for being the strongest, sweetest, most loving and caring person I could ever ask for.
I love you and I will love you until my last gasp of air.
Your daughter.
When I finish writing the letter I put it under my pillow. I ask my mom if she can come to room. When she’s here, I ask her if she can just cuddle with me. She gets inside the blankets and hugs me. I hold her arms and a tear runs down my cheek. Then, I just slowly close my eyes.
GLOSARY:
Frau: Woman
Haputbahnhof: main train station
Bahn: train
Altstadt: old town
München: Munich
Weisswurst: white sausage
Biergarten: beer garden
ein weisswurst bitte: a white sausage, please
wurst: sausage
María José Aguirre
3er semestre de preparatoria.
