Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid Read Free Page A

house, “Hello!
Kids!
It’s
Mom
! I’m
home
!” In the car, she played the cool radio stations—Z100 and Power 95—and tapped the steering wheel to MarkyMark or Madonna. When I was a kid, she always had enough pieces of gum in her pocketbook for me and all my friends, and at our birthday parties she stuffed everyone’s little plastic goodie bags until they looked like trick-or-treat take-ins. Mom could make even the most mundane tasks fun—whether it was taking out the trash or learning the state capitals before a social studies test—there was always an accompanying song or dance move. As we grew older, my girlfriends all wanted to be her friend, and my guy friends thought she was hot.
    At the height of her illness, Mom threw on a wig, put on makeup, and forced herself to get up and go, if only to show everyone else that things were all right. If she did have moments of mental frailty, it was behind her bedroom door. With us, she put on a happy face and bubbly voice; she was still the blonde beauty Supermom. I knew she was sick, but I never actually believed my mom could die. I just assumed she’d beat this just like she took on every other obstacle—with determination and fervor until she won. At that time, Mom was more than a mom. She was my friend. I went to her for boy advice; I called her from the high school lobby pay phone during teenage meltdowns. She was the person who advised me on everything from what topic to pick for my English paper to what I should wear to prom.
    But eventually the illness caught up with her. Parties were cancelled. Vacations were called off. My youngest brother decorated her hospital room with hisnewly won tennis trophies from matches she wouldn’t have dreamed of missing a year ago. She wore a pin on her jacket that explained exactly how she felt: “Cancer Sucks.”
    During my senior year of high school, I would come home and gently turn the knob to her bedroom door. She’d be in bed, lying on her back, the comforter tucked under her chin, her wig on the bedside table. The sunlight from the window grazed the tips of her blonde buzz cut. It looked as if it had been sprinkled with gold glitter.
    No one says
cure
when they talk about cancer—at least they never did to my mom—and even during her healthy stretches, there was always a pestering voice in the back of everyone’s head.
This may not be the end of it
.
    Mom fought hard. One morning while I was getting ready for school, I heard her arguing with Dad in their bedroom. The door was closed—they didn’t want to worry us—but I opened it anyway.
    “Jessica, tell your father that I am not going back to the hospital!” She was on the floor, still in her nightgown, sitting next to a large red stain on the carpet. She reached into a bucket full of sudsy water, holding a rag that was also stained red. She pulled the rag at both ends furiously, dripping pink suds onto the floor. Mom started sobbing again. I went over to console her. Dad stood at his closet, already dressed for work. As a doctor, he was used to seeing patients in the hospital, trained to deal with them in a removed, clinical way.He now had to adjust to sharing a home with a chronic patient. Bedside manner is taught in medical school, but no one tells you what to do when the person you’re treating is your wife.
    “Honey, you just threw up a lot of blood. We have no idea what is going on,” Dad said.
    “I feel fine!” She knew Dad was right; she was arguing with the cancer. Eventually, Mom gave in. Not only that time, but time and time again. There were weekly stints in the hospital for radiation, then chemo; then more radiation. Daily, it seemed, doctors drew her blood to check low red blood cell counts and high white blood cell counts until the thin blue veins in her arms collapsed and they had to start poking her legs. She went to an herbal specialist who gave her immunity-boosting teas. Her hair fell out and then grew back again, only to fall out twice