Praying for a home run

If life were a graph, with its highs and lows, peaks and valleys, waves and troughs, my family (my parents, especially) found itself in the last six months strapped to the line that surged and plummeted like a roller coaster against this graph.

Before September last year, our lives were visited only by the most manageable of worries (although at the time, we didn’t appreciate just how manageable they were) and the most tolerable of aggravations (like a five-pound weight gain, a tiff, or a flight delayed by 11 hours). We sweated small stuff. I had gone on a spiritual retreat with former Assumption classmates in August, and most of them remember me as saying (perhaps bragging) that my greatest joy was that not a single member of my family, including my husband’s family, was sick.

Till it was confirmed on Sept. 8 last year that my father Frank, 77, had a malignant tumor in the pancreas. My dad and mom Sonia have four daughters, and so for more than half our lives, Dad was the only man in the family. The provider, the protector, the pillar. He picked me up from school when I missed the schoolbus, from all my “mixed” (meaning there were boys) parties in high school, from the office when I had started to go to work. Till he got sick, he was the one who still sealed our balikbayan boxes and loaded them in his car every time we visited him and Mom in Anaheim, their home for almost 20 years now.

So from the moment we waited for the results of his first CT scan, waiting with bated breath for the overseas phone call that would relieve us of our worst fears or confirm them (they were confirmed), to every waiting period following the numerous tests thereafter, it has been one helluva ride for us.

The worst part, so far, was after Dad’s surgery at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (USC) last October. Because bantays are not allowed in the hospital, we checked into a nearby hotel accredited by the hospital, and which offered shuttle service to it. On the day of the surgery, an eight- to 10-hour surgery called Whipple (which if successful would take out the cancer completely), we were issued name tags and shown to a waiting room as Dad was led to the OR. The well-appointed waiting room looked like a hotel lobby. The family was given a blinker, which lights up if the surgeon has to talk to you midway or after surgery. Your hope is that it lights up only after surgery, and that the doctor is smiling as he waits for you to approach him.

Two hours into surgery, we see my Dad’s doctor emerge from the OR. He doesn’t look happy and even before our blinker lights up, my mom and sister Geraldine, a doctor, approach him. He asks them to proceed to a nearby enclosed room, and he shuts the door behind him.

My other sister Val and I (Mae had gone to the toilet) follow and peep through a glass partition in the room. No one looked happy or relieved. The surgeon was talking but somehow, no one was crying. It was at this point that we entered the room where the silence was so thick you could slice it with a scalpel. And in a voice I will never forget, Geraldine tells us, “Dad’s cancer has spread.”

The doctor was not proceeding with the Whipple. He was closing Dad up and advising chemotherapy. It seemed to us at the time that his main concern was compartmentalized — that there were no complications to the surgery and that Dad’s case be transferred to an oncologist. He was a surgeon, simply doing his job, and moving on.

 Did he offer us hope? No. Was he encouraging? No. When my mom asked, “How long?” he gave an answer that was so devastating we all cried like there was no tomorrow. It was the first time I saw my mother cry in years. It was the lowest point because until that time our hearts were filled with hope, and after the doctor spoke to us it was like our hearts were punctured and all hope was drained away.

* * *

But after we wiped away the tears, we rallied. My mother always says, “As long as I breathe, I hope.” We had a strong support system, family, friends, and more important, each other.

A doctor friend from the Philippines advised us to be focused on our choice of treatment for Dad, because he warned us, and he was right, “that you will be receiving a million and one suggestions on what would be good for him.” We appreciated all the recommendations, even those for alternative treatments, but decided to keep Dad in the US for chemotherapy. Since his surgery and during chemotherapy, Dad has had some close calls, his blood pressure falling to 40/0 at one point. But he has always been pulled back from the brink. We know now why so many strive for American citizenship — despite its flaws, their health care and insurance system has allowed my dad to have excellent health care that has not wiped them out financially. It is a blessing that they are citizens of a country that knows how to care for its citizens in their twilight years.

* * *

My dad found out that he had cancer on Mama Mary’s birthday. Perhaps, it was a gentle reminder that she would take care of him. On her next feast day, Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, healing priest Father Fernando Suarez happened to be (or was meant to be?) in a silver wedding anniversary celebration just five minutes away from my parents’ apartment in Anaheim. With the help of friends in Manila, we were able to get in touch with Father Suarez and he visited Dad.

Father prayed over Dad and gently put his palm to his wound from surgery. In a matter of days, Dad’s appetite was back, he was driving again, and attending Mass. By Dec. 18, 10 days after Father Suarez’s visit, Dad drove Mom and himself to their own wedding anniversary banquet. By Christmas, he looked and moved like he had never had cancer in his life.

This was a definite peak, a high point that made me say that no matter what else happened after Christmas, we already had received a great gift from God. Dad was doing so well that, I must admit now, I prayed with less urgency and less often. It is really true that suffering brings you closer to God and his kindness — you dial His number more often, you talk to Him more. As a result, you listen to Him more and hear Him more. But when the going gets better, you sometimes take it easy, too.

Last month, Dad was just steady in his graph, no major highs or lows. But we were jolted out of our complacency again.

This time, not by bad news but by good news, very good news, relayed to me by Mom via an early morning overseas phone call, her voice breathless with happiness.

According to Mom, my dad’s primary doctor Robert Devereaux (of the Fountain Valley Hospital) told him, during a routine checkup, “You know Frank, you are a wonder!”

Dr. Devereaux told Dad that in his over three decades of medical practice, he has not seen anyone with pancreatic cancer that was still in as relatively good a shape as my dad is. I know doctors are cautious and are not supposed to give a patient false hopes, so I know Dr. Devereaux knew what he was talking about when he told Dad, “You will go down in medical history.”

* * *

Last week, on the eve of my birthday, came another call from Mom. “May pa-birthday ang Diyos sa iyo!” were her very words. God’s gift? My dad’s tumor has shrunk by more than half, from 5.5 cm to 2.1 cm. Another peak!

My sister Valerie was so overjoyed she told me, “I feel like it is my birthday, too!”

Dad has since passed the original timetable given by the surgeon who saw Dad’s cancer with his own two eyes. As a friend, Deedee Siytangco, once told me, “Never give God a deadline.”

My dad’s oncologist Dr. Haresh Jhangiani, for his part, says my dad still has to be careful and must continue chemotherapy still. “Frank, you’re doing a home run but you haven’t reached home base yet.” An apt metaphor because my dad loved and played baseball.

On my birthday last Thursday, I went to a beauty salon in a mall, and in the lobby, my eyes were drawn to a poster of the movie Extraordinary Measures starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford. Below their names was the blurb, “Don’t hope for a miracle. Make one.”

Those of us who have been blessed by a miracle know it is possible to do both — hope for a miracle and make one.

God sends us miracles every day, and people — from kind friends, to healing priests to amazing doctors — make them happen.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])