my soul has not been with me for many months. it demands a term i am not able to fulfill. life has never been easy without it:
- my best friend daughter had a follow up treatment in early june. i was informed the day before they left for the States. made no difference if i knew it early or late as i had no means to visit her before they left. the whole time they were there i was thinking of the approaching ramadhan and praying they would be back home before ramadhan.
الحمد لله they were back home before ramadhan and she has been doing fine since. again she does not know me but in my dua she is my daughter.
- there are only three beautiful ladies (including me… ما شاء الله ) left in my office. the forth passed away in july, two weeks before ramadhan. i did mention her in one of my posts.
fast backward, i was either misinformed or misunderstood her. the chemotheraphy she underwent last year was for cancer. i was thinking (i thought she had told me so) it was just a precaution not to let cancer cell to start breeding after the tumor had been removed. i was wrong, she had cancer, it was not just a tumor.
about a year after she completed chemotheraphy, her other organs (liver, stomach, kidney, bladder…….and God knows what else…) were massively intruded by cancer cells that grew large enough to block her digestive system and an endoscope failed to go through!!!.
she had been missing from the office for one week before we found out the reason. she underwent her last chemotheraphy in the third week and passed on four days after that.
إنا لله وإنا إليه رجعون to Allah we belong and to Him we shall return.
may Allah forgive her and forgive us all.
- while i was still in the hospital with the others during our final hour with our passing-on lady colleague, i had a phone call from one of my friends from high school. she informed me another friend of ours had been in a coma for the past one week. the friend in a coma shared five years of two different high-school life with me. five years is about 11 percents of my life and maybe 12 percents of my life from my first memories. we were never close but she is always fresh in my head. she was pretty, gentle, girlish and tender but at the same time strong and very determined. the news was totally unexpected by anyone of us. she was successful with her own law-firm and a strong family support system. those who met her during a high-school gathering in 2010 recalled she was healthy and did not mention any health problem (yes...they discussed health as few of them (i did not attend the reunioun) just lost their loved ones due to cancer and stroke).
i visited her twice, before ramadhan, once with shrf, and once alone. according to her only brother and also her only sibling whom we met during the first visit, a blood vessel to her frontal brain had ruptured. by then she had gone through two operations. first was to contain the rupture and blood clot or for the doctor to assess the severity of the damage (ehem….i made that up because i cannot remember exactly what was told). second was to make a hole on her neck so that a breathing tube could be fitted in and she could breathe without a breathing machine which long term use could lead to infection. the sad news was her frontal brain which among others was responsible for thinking and memory storage was permanently damaged, and if she ever recovers she may not recognize anyone and remember anything. that was the only damaged part of her brain while the other parts as well as other critical organs (heart, lung, digestive system and all) were still healthy. to others the-only-damaged-part is the most important part but to her family the-other-parts-are-healthy is and it is a great consolation from Allah.
the last update i got about her was after eid fitr; she was no longer in the ICU and no longer depended on a breathing machine. the update has not been updated since then. she is still in a coma.
may Allah give her strength and may Allah give her family patience… إن شاءالله.
- my housemate when i was in the States asked me to PM her on my wall (yes….FB!) in ramadhan. after three in-a-row, within two months, of not-so good news the message prompted my head to imagine all sorts of scary turn of event. after fruitless attempts to get her (she did not pick up the phone adding worry), i called our other housemate (there were three of us then). we both tried to get her few times, through phone and FB message but still to no avail. after one of the longest 24 hours of my life she PM me breaking the heart-breaking news.
she had just undergone a preliminary operation for breast cancer. i cringed. i would not blog about the details but only few good points; 1. it is at early stage which means the survival rate is high 2. the cancer cell is of the least active or non-invasive type 3. she is strong, optimistic and a fighter…. الحمد لله
i trust no one who knows her is unaffected by the news. i have never realized how much i love both of them, my housemates in the States, until i heard the news.
may Allah give her strength and keep her moving stronger than the one she is fighting.... آمين
