Hope

Thank God for art. It keeps me sane when I otherwise would be entertaining black, dark thoughts. Those thoughts are hard to keep away, but I can keep them at bay by sublimating my pain in my art.

This is one of a series I am doing on childhood diseases. Diseases that might have killed our children 100 years ago. Medicine has come far. We can prevent things like polio, which 50 years ago was a disease that maimed and killed thousands. My father contracted polio, and was forever affected by it until his death.

My father got cancer at my age-49. Primary tumor unknown, metastasis to the lymph nodes and finally, to the brain. Once found, the doctors said it was too late to treat him. They gave him a year to live; he died within three months. I was 19, and we were never allowed to tell him he was going to die. I won't relate the effects it had on four children for the rest of their lives, and how horrible it was to watch a parent die day by day. Perhaps if he was alive today he might have been given a longer lease on life, and been in less pain.

Perhaps this is why I feel so fragile now facing the same disease, but only in my own child. Sometimes Megan gets angry with me because I ask so many questions and I want to be intimately involved in her treatments and in her life. Perhaps in some ways I am trying to make up for what I could not do thirty years ago.

I have to believe that medicine can cure and save my child. Somehow I have to have hope and faith. I wish my own spirituality were stronger as I don't think that my own resources are strong enough to get me through this.....
For now I have art, friends, and an online support group. My therapist is very ill, so I don't have her right now...she was my guiding light towards finding my own spirituality and healing. I grasp at straws, holding tight when I get one.

I apologized to Megan for being so assertive; she told me it was OK, as it all was bigger and larger than she could handle. We take it a moment at a time.

Today she was smiling..she spent the evening with friends playing poker and won 50.00......and was heading home with her boyfriend and daughter. I will make her a pot of sauce tonight...and put in love, hope, strength, and healing.

Patti