Snatched Away . . . just like that!
by: Maria Ella Regondola-Cabanlet
May 28 2010 Friday 9:04 pm
Sleep eludes me again for three nights now, and forgetting my favourite borrowed dictum that “sleep is the only thing that I could not achieve by trying harder.” I try so hard to rest!
My mind keeps on marching back to March 30, 2010. On this date two very significant things were to happen. It was my eldest son’s 7th birthday and it was the date I was to have my bone marrow transplant. It was not me who chose the schedule that was why I gave significant “magical” meaning to it. I thought it was God’s greatest gift to my son, his mom’s new life on his own birth date.
The mixed affect was clear in the bone marrow transplant unit that date. All the staff nurses were there, the entire BMT team, the other specialist involved were just around the hospital premises, my husband was there, and I knew many people were saying prayers for me that day. My donor sister called me up early from her own hospital room telling me that it will just be a matter of hours and that God was with us. She was wheeled off to the operating room at seven AM, while I waited in my bed laconic. I was maybe anxious, despite mind setting, but I was full of hope for the second chance the Lord was giving me. I really felt like grasping Him and hugging Him only if He was tangible that time. My heart was full of ought of Him, there is no doubt in my mind that I will speak about Him the rest of my earthly life!
An hour later, I was given sedative/anxiolytic and was told that in 15 minutes time the transplant will start. Fighting off the effect of the sedative I felt that I was hooked to cardiac monitor, vital signs were checked, and the cardiology team came in giving the green sign that transplant maybe started. I saw my sister’s bone marrow; it looked like an ordinary blood only in a much bigger container and not as bright red as peripheral blood. The last thing the BMT team leader told me was that “everything will be fine, it was good thing your sister has big bones we were able to harvest 1.5 L when you only need 1.2 L.” Then they all went out of the unit and only two nurses and a hematology fellow were left inside.
I fell asleep. Then all of a sudden I felt something fell off my head. It hit so hard I thought my skull cracked! I thought the cardiac monitor fell off my head and I could not move! I tried to shout but no words would come out of my mouth. My hands were too weak to touch my head to feel it, and the nurse and doctor who were there seemed not to care something fell off my head. The severe crushing pain was followed by stab like pain in my chest, and then I heard them saying the BP is up! The pain in my chest became a pressure that seemed to suck the air out of my lungs. This time I gathered all my strength to get up as I coughed and coughed grasping for air. I noticed then that room was full of people asking “Can you now breathe? Are you feeling better? Please relax!” Groggy from the sedatives I did not exactly know what was happening, but through what I was hearing I gathered that I was rejecting my sister’s perfectly matched bone marrow. They said they never had anything like this before since though my sister is blood type “B” and I was blood type “O” it was not her blood that was being transfused but her bone marrow which was devoid of the blood elements that would cause an immediate rejection reaction. They gave room for the possibility that I was just too anxious for the procedure so they resumed. With each slow drop of the bone marrow my vital signs became paradoxical; with high BP I started having bradycardia. The procedure has to be terminated with less than three hundred cc infused of the required 1.2L! The BMT unit in my observation suddenly just turned gray.
From laconic I became mute and just slept for aside from being sedated I did not know how and what to feel. I was awakened the following day by my husband’s shaking saying I was perhaps having nightmare as he said I was groaning. MY SITUATION WAS INDEED A NIGHTMARE! In my mind I believed, that was it! Perhaps my time had really come. Without my sister’s bone marrow and with my own bone marrow eroded by the strong chemo drugs, I will just be waiting for my time. My husband holding my hand while on my bedside blabber about faith and trust in God while all the thoughts of acceptance of my near death played on my mind. I looked at him and wanted to tell him things but I really became mute that day. Even my tears won’t come out though I know I had pails and pails to shed. I could see him teary eyed but still faithful that God will continue what He had started me. My husband’s heart firmly believed that God will not bring us as far as admission at the BMT unit just to die there. Stephen’s faith was just too much I have to look away lest he will see that mine has been SNAPPED away by the devil already. And I allowed the devil to SNAP it away from me without a good fight.
Always my number one prayer warrior, my husband started praying at the top of his voice that moment as he felt I was holding my faith in a tiny string again. Inside the BMT unit he was praising and thanking the Lord for yesterday’s event. He was really at the top of his voice crying the nurses on duty had to come inside to see what was going on. But Stephen just continued praising and thanking God! I did not hear him pray that God let me survive even without transplant; instead he prayed that God would put back in me the faith I had that I will be healed. It was then that I started crying again for I remembered was it not just few hours prior to the aborted transplant I was ready to be God’s champion?! Was it not also the day before the transplant I clearly profess God’s goodness in my life when I made one of my articles? Where did it all go? Just one frustration I was ready to throw God out of the window! Forgetting all the other good things He has done for me, forgetting His love for me, and putting His faithfulness equal with my human faith. I was not angry with God though, I just lost the faith.
Clearly in that test of faith my human nature again won! My faith is determined by IMMEDIATE and FAVORABLE result. When it does not happen the way I hope for it to happen, I reduce the Lord to my level. If only the problem was financial I could have borrowed or asked from someone money, and considered that act (borrowing and asking) as God’s way of answering my prayer request. If only the problem was something I could do something about, something tangible, I would have done it myself and considered MY OWN actions as God’s way of answering my prayer. If only He made that transplant smooth sailing the way He did it to others my confidence in Him would have not faltered! I could not trust His promise of more years in my life that time because even my doctors went out of the unit with confused faces.
In retrospect though, it had to be that way. I have to be pushed against the wall where there is nothing anyone can do to make me understand what He really meant when He said that “His ways and thoughts are higher than mine”, “that He is faithful to finish the work that He started”, and that “He is the God of the impossible”. I have to be awakened from the fact that the faith in Him that I profess and boast about was skin deep and all lip service. My faith was so shallow that with simple presence of the devil, even without the devil taunting me, it fades away as quickly as I say it. Oh how easy for me to say God is good! How easy for me to say God will provide! And how easy for me to say God is merciful He will heal me! But when put to tests? I doubted Him and went back to my own old self seeing the Lord as someone with limitation. Good thing that God’s faithfulness is unlike mine! He did not leave me despite my doubt. He instead “provided me a way out of that temptation” not to call upon Him anymore. He sent my husband Stephen who I believe is always filled with the Holy Spirit when he prays, as in our nine years of marriage he always prays for the right thing even if it meant inconvenience for us all. He was on his knees not for my life but for a real faith to be seeded again in my heart.
God is faithful to finish every work He started in me. He brought me as far as the BMT unit, though my little faith then did not doubted it, He finished my transplant through the success of the second attempt. The second attempt was “miraculously” smooth as I slept the whole time and had normal vital signs. I was still constantly awakened by chest pain which make me shout “Jesus my greatest healer please hide me in the shadow of your love and protection” in my mind. With this simple prayer immediate relief of my chest pain would come. The second attempt of transplant was finished in three hours time, uneventful in God’s higher way! Ironically the successful transplant happened on an April fool’s day! On the flip side though, it was a Maundy Thursday, a day before the passion of Christ centuries ago. I did no longer see it as “magically significant day” rather it was His appointed time for my new life in Him.
The complication of my transplant right now is far more dangerous than the transplant itself. My new bone marrow is rejecting and attacking my liver. My liver profile results are thousands times higher than normal, and I am presently jaundiced. I still fear a lot of things; after all I am still a “doctor” and human being. The only difference now is that I don’t let the enemy snatch away my faith again just like that! I come to learn the secret weapon of knowing Jesus Christ by heart as the best armour to protect my faith. Among the books that I try to know by heart now, the one that contains the truth of who God really is, is the book that contains the Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, everyone knows this book!
I come to realize that in order for me to have a solid faith in Him, I must know Him first. Knowing Him is the beginning of wisdom!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Hibernating
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 10:34pm
I have tried so many times to write everything that comes into my mind but I could not organize them into something that would make sense. So unlike me rather, as my mind and my finger tips are blessed with coordination, expressing my thoughts and emotions is not a difficult task for me. It kind a scare me as I seem to lose it. I was told by my doctors that this is just one of the many “necessary evils” of all the things that I have been through for the past months. If “lucky” enough I will regain the speed of my neuronal processing shorter than three months, if not I might as well start mental exercises to at least make sure that it will return.
This is my 7th day after discharge, 48th day post transplant. Home indeed, but still away from my well longed husband and kids. The rules are: get out of the room only when necessary, wear triple mask at all times, eat in the room, change and clean everything in the room everyday, never eat uncooked or even just half cooked food, never have visitor, and most of all rest all you can. Where I am now is a miniature St. Luke’s that I don’t have to pay millions. With the help of one house help I monitor my own vital signs, clean my own chest wounds, measure my own input and output, and compute for my own daily calorie and protein intake and make sure that I take all my medications on time ( I take at least 14 kinds of medications now TID) . At this point is the reason why maybe the Lord made me what I am by profession. I don’t have to pay for a private nurse that will surely add up to our financial burden.
I think I am the most unattractive creature anybody can lay their eyes upon right now. Bald to till head skin, it’s like being waxed everyday it looks to me that my hair has no chance of growing back again and not even a single hair survived! My skin burnt to black! There is nothing that covers me that is not burnt by the chemo drugs. And because of the immune suppressants (cell cept and prednisone at high doses) that I am taking my muscles (especially my leg muscles) are wasting! Imagine Mr. Incredible? That is how my body is proportioned right now. Nothing hurts though only my pride, and I am very thankful I don’t feel weak. At this point is the reason why maybe the Lord genetically endowed me with body that has resistant fats. As my nutritionist told me, my reserved fats along with antibiotics protected me from having sepsis again during those times that I was febrile and could not eat anything. The exercise resistant fats that I used to hate so much were there for a reason.
My first three days at home was as senseless as my chaotic mind. I do not know what to do with my time. I pace around till I got tired enough to just fall asleep, read without understanding single line of what I was reading. I tried provoking myself to anger or just irritability by watching news and awaken any emotion at all. I used to get angry and stress myself out when I hear not so good news, but in my first three days home even the results of election had no effect on me. It is hard fact to accept that I think I am actually being apathetic! I felt little excitement on my way home after discharge but when I arrived here at home, the emotional “blank” returned. Indeed the forefathers of psychiatry found a great discovery when they said that when someone is subjected long enough to pain and suffering the result would be that they become “meek”. Even though they have mind of their own they lose the emotional energy to fight back. Like trained dog that would jump and pick up stick without knowing the logic. Like domestic animal that would be slaughtered also not knowing the logic of it.
I thought I already need professional help. I have been handling myself emotionally and psychologically since my diagnosis in September last year, and logic is now telling me I am no longer seeing the entire picture. Mind you I do not meet any criteria of Axis I psychiatric diagnosis but as I have said maybe I am not seeing it as I should.
A day or two ago, I just decided to pick a book. The first thing I noticed was the famous line “TO EVERYTHING THERE IS SEASON, A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE IN HEAVEN: A TIME TO BE BORN, AND A TIME TO DIE”. It surprised me that this line was JFK’s favourite words of wisdom, learned from the wisest man who ever walked on this earth, King Solomon himself! The King in his lowest moment (severely depressed if I am to make a diagnosis) in Ecclesiastes saw vanity in everything despite what he had and what he was capable of. For some reason it made me feel good, for even the wisest king and a great US president had been through dark times. They knew the wisdom that they could not stop bad things from happening and that many things are beyond their control despite their position and power. Only God can truly decide what will happen. Truly sun and rain comes to all and it will come on time appointed if it is line with a purpose in heaven!
At that moment great insight came to me that I am not having any psychiatric issue but rather I am in HIBERNATION. I don’t exactly know what happens emotionally to animals that hibernate but what I knew is that they have to hibernate to ensure survival from hostile environment for some time. My “apathy”, a very bad thing for psychiatrist, has to happen to make sure that my soul is empty enough to absorb new and better emotions. How will I be able to be happy again when resentment over possible lost career, lost physical beauty, lost physical strength and all loses a cancer survivor (more so a transplant patient) could ever think of will loom over me all the time? I am being thought a lot of new things right now. I am in the process of stripping myself of my learned behaviour I have been practicing for the past 37 years. I would like to consider myself asleep from my old self, to be cleansed thoroughly.
This hibernation is God’s way of protecting me from my human nature. If allowed to be out in the world where I have been prior to my leukemia, I will be eaten up again by my own need to compete, to be successful, be praised and ultimately be envied. It is my realization now that even those wants hides no logic, only good feelings. Addicting a good feeling that has driven me on the verge of real weariness without realizing it! And I now believe that this contributed heavily on my leukemia. With weariness came the worst feeling of all “envy” on other people’s good fortune. Then the cycle return, more achievement should be accomplished. I believe those times were more tiring than being on hospital bed for months and months. And God in His infinite wisdom He knows that I will put Him second or third or worst, even forget all about Him again when He let me get out of this situation easily. I am still isolated because I am not ready to face the world. After all I would not want my leukemia to amount to nothing! The experience was tragically wonderful I would not want to waste it. In my every solitude He strengthens every aspect of my being and I am just so thankful for it!
Now is my season to master the more important thing in my life, my walk in faith and full trust in Jesus, and if I still have a purpose for heaven here on earth, that time too shall come!!!
I have tried so many times to write everything that comes into my mind but I could not organize them into something that would make sense. So unlike me rather, as my mind and my finger tips are blessed with coordination, expressing my thoughts and emotions is not a difficult task for me. It kind a scare me as I seem to lose it. I was told by my doctors that this is just one of the many “necessary evils” of all the things that I have been through for the past months. If “lucky” enough I will regain the speed of my neuronal processing shorter than three months, if not I might as well start mental exercises to at least make sure that it will return.
This is my 7th day after discharge, 48th day post transplant. Home indeed, but still away from my well longed husband and kids. The rules are: get out of the room only when necessary, wear triple mask at all times, eat in the room, change and clean everything in the room everyday, never eat uncooked or even just half cooked food, never have visitor, and most of all rest all you can. Where I am now is a miniature St. Luke’s that I don’t have to pay millions. With the help of one house help I monitor my own vital signs, clean my own chest wounds, measure my own input and output, and compute for my own daily calorie and protein intake and make sure that I take all my medications on time ( I take at least 14 kinds of medications now TID) . At this point is the reason why maybe the Lord made me what I am by profession. I don’t have to pay for a private nurse that will surely add up to our financial burden.
I think I am the most unattractive creature anybody can lay their eyes upon right now. Bald to till head skin, it’s like being waxed everyday it looks to me that my hair has no chance of growing back again and not even a single hair survived! My skin burnt to black! There is nothing that covers me that is not burnt by the chemo drugs. And because of the immune suppressants (cell cept and prednisone at high doses) that I am taking my muscles (especially my leg muscles) are wasting! Imagine Mr. Incredible? That is how my body is proportioned right now. Nothing hurts though only my pride, and I am very thankful I don’t feel weak. At this point is the reason why maybe the Lord genetically endowed me with body that has resistant fats. As my nutritionist told me, my reserved fats along with antibiotics protected me from having sepsis again during those times that I was febrile and could not eat anything. The exercise resistant fats that I used to hate so much were there for a reason.
My first three days at home was as senseless as my chaotic mind. I do not know what to do with my time. I pace around till I got tired enough to just fall asleep, read without understanding single line of what I was reading. I tried provoking myself to anger or just irritability by watching news and awaken any emotion at all. I used to get angry and stress myself out when I hear not so good news, but in my first three days home even the results of election had no effect on me. It is hard fact to accept that I think I am actually being apathetic! I felt little excitement on my way home after discharge but when I arrived here at home, the emotional “blank” returned. Indeed the forefathers of psychiatry found a great discovery when they said that when someone is subjected long enough to pain and suffering the result would be that they become “meek”. Even though they have mind of their own they lose the emotional energy to fight back. Like trained dog that would jump and pick up stick without knowing the logic. Like domestic animal that would be slaughtered also not knowing the logic of it.
I thought I already need professional help. I have been handling myself emotionally and psychologically since my diagnosis in September last year, and logic is now telling me I am no longer seeing the entire picture. Mind you I do not meet any criteria of Axis I psychiatric diagnosis but as I have said maybe I am not seeing it as I should.
A day or two ago, I just decided to pick a book. The first thing I noticed was the famous line “TO EVERYTHING THERE IS SEASON, A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE IN HEAVEN: A TIME TO BE BORN, AND A TIME TO DIE”. It surprised me that this line was JFK’s favourite words of wisdom, learned from the wisest man who ever walked on this earth, King Solomon himself! The King in his lowest moment (severely depressed if I am to make a diagnosis) in Ecclesiastes saw vanity in everything despite what he had and what he was capable of. For some reason it made me feel good, for even the wisest king and a great US president had been through dark times. They knew the wisdom that they could not stop bad things from happening and that many things are beyond their control despite their position and power. Only God can truly decide what will happen. Truly sun and rain comes to all and it will come on time appointed if it is line with a purpose in heaven!
At that moment great insight came to me that I am not having any psychiatric issue but rather I am in HIBERNATION. I don’t exactly know what happens emotionally to animals that hibernate but what I knew is that they have to hibernate to ensure survival from hostile environment for some time. My “apathy”, a very bad thing for psychiatrist, has to happen to make sure that my soul is empty enough to absorb new and better emotions. How will I be able to be happy again when resentment over possible lost career, lost physical beauty, lost physical strength and all loses a cancer survivor (more so a transplant patient) could ever think of will loom over me all the time? I am being thought a lot of new things right now. I am in the process of stripping myself of my learned behaviour I have been practicing for the past 37 years. I would like to consider myself asleep from my old self, to be cleansed thoroughly.
This hibernation is God’s way of protecting me from my human nature. If allowed to be out in the world where I have been prior to my leukemia, I will be eaten up again by my own need to compete, to be successful, be praised and ultimately be envied. It is my realization now that even those wants hides no logic, only good feelings. Addicting a good feeling that has driven me on the verge of real weariness without realizing it! And I now believe that this contributed heavily on my leukemia. With weariness came the worst feeling of all “envy” on other people’s good fortune. Then the cycle return, more achievement should be accomplished. I believe those times were more tiring than being on hospital bed for months and months. And God in His infinite wisdom He knows that I will put Him second or third or worst, even forget all about Him again when He let me get out of this situation easily. I am still isolated because I am not ready to face the world. After all I would not want my leukemia to amount to nothing! The experience was tragically wonderful I would not want to waste it. In my every solitude He strengthens every aspect of my being and I am just so thankful for it!
Now is my season to master the more important thing in my life, my walk in faith and full trust in Jesus, and if I still have a purpose for heaven here on earth, that time too shall come!!!
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