I’m breaking my fasting of being off of forumosa for lent. Then this is the first post read.
Imaniou has shared a bit of her story with me. I assure that for her to share this story means that she is coming full circle of it’s impact. What I know of what she has been thru, which I will not share, because that is her story to tell, is one of hardship, endurance, and triumph. Imaniou’s soul is one of courage, endurance and perverance. She is someone that should not be judged by her cover as she has a deep heart, wise, compassionate, dedicated and determined. As well as loving. It’s unfortunate that she has to throw in the towel as that I am certain that anyone who would be a receiptant of her love would never be the same.
[quote=“Namahottie”]I’m breaking my fasting of being off of forumosa for lent. Then this is the first post read.
Imaniou has shared a bit of her story with me. I assure that for her to share this story means that she is coming full circle of it’s impact. What I know of what she has been through, which I will not share, because that is her story to tell, is one of hardship, endurance, and triumph. Imaniou’s soul is one of courage, endurance and perverance. She is someone that should not be judged by her cover as she has a deep heart, wise, compassionate, dedicated and determined. As well as loving. It’s unfortunate that she has to throw in the towel as that I am certain that anyone who would be a receiptant of her love would never be the same.[/quote]
It’s Lent?
My god, I am a lapsed catholic.
Nama, your post is far too cryptic. One more hook in my heart. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
Lent. Oh, but of course: Mardi Gras and all that.
Hmm. Should give my mother a call and ask if she needs me to send her some fish.
[quote=“Muzha Man”][quote=“Namahottie”]I’m breaking my fasting of being off of forumosa for lent. Then this is the first post read.
Imaniou has shared a bit of her story with me. I assure that for her to share this story means that she is coming full circle of it’s impact. What I know of what she has been through, which I will not share, because that is her story to tell, is one of hardship, endurance, and triumph. Imaniou’s soul is one of courage, endurance and perverance. She is someone that should not be judged by her cover as she has a deep heart, wise, compassionate, dedicated and determined. As well as loving. It’s unfortunate that she has to throw in the towel as that I am certain that anyone who would be a receiptant of her love would never be the same.[/quote]
It’s Lent?
My god, I am a lapsed catholic.
Nama, your post is far too cryptic. One more hook in my heart. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!![/quote]
Its not crytic. It’s lent and I thought I would give up formosa for the time. But I’ve hit a bump and happened to get online for my online sanity. Imaniou is a great person, but quite often I feel that she is judged by her cover. Bottom line is that her story is something to learn from, but it is not for me to say what it is…
(phew…finished at 12:41am…now the editing starts!)
Part III - March 11, 1994
I really wish I could be one of those people who could say they remembered every last detail on the day that changed their lives, from what they ate to what people said to them with such vivid images and sensations. Sometimes I question their ability to really remember every little thing if it doesn’t have a reason to be remembered. I suspect they just say they do and make up the details they forget.
When my important moment came, however - the moment that I knew something was really wrong - I remember exactly what I had been doing.
My mother had refused to leave my room except to go down 4 floors to have a cigarette outside in the bitter cold weather. She wasn’t a heavy smoker before then, and I don’t think she had been after, but I know she was riddled with a lot of guilt (about letting me stay sick without treatment for so long and leaving my little sister at home) and fear (about what her ex-husband-to-be-but-not-fast-enough would probably do to her when she finally went home after “neglecting” him for 2-1/2 days) and would come back to my room with a coffee, reeking of cigarette smoke.
Because of the rift caused by her ex-husband-to-be who absolutely hated me and seemed to resent my very existence, as well as the usual things that happen when one is an adolescent, I had grown pretty far apart from my mother. When the accusation of me being pregnant came up, she actually took me aside and asked me if I was. Me, the pastor’s pet in the young adult’s Sunday school class, who had messages like “I could be like you in just one night, but you’ll never be a virgin again” pounded into my very impressionable and willing head.
I had begun to pull away from her after the incident where I had the wind knocked out of me because I playfully climbed onto her ex-husband-to-be’s back. He spat out (literally with his chewing tobacco crumbs onto my face) the words, “Don’t you ever climb on my back again,” and she defended him saying he was only playing. She was always longer cowering or trying to make light of the threats and insults he flung at me or the ones I just as nastily flung back. For the first time since I was 11 years old and he became a part of our lives, though, I enjoyed the company of my mother while I had her to myself in the hospital.
We started reconnecting to each other through the one thing we had in common: TV. She sat next to my bed and we would watch together. I had control over the TV at all times except from 1pm to 2pm when her show, All My Children came on. In normal times, she would set the VCR to tape it while she was at work, but now she could watch it live. I tolerated watching it as she would tell me about each character. She was such a fan, I had been named after one of the characters on the program. The other thing we would share was The Muppet Show. It was my favorite show when I was little (as anyone who has had to listen to my tragic story of when I got in trouble in first grade and was punished by not getting to watch the Muppets that night would know). It seemed these two programs which already had strong meanings for both my mother and me were the perfect way to rebuild our fractured relationship. But those things came later.
On the morning of March 11, a Friday, we had just had the breakfast tray cleared away and were watching TV together. I had done the bathroom thing, adamantly refusing to settle for a horrible bedpan as the floor resident tried to force me to do (I refused to do a lot of things he told me to do, being a teenager, after all and resenting being commanded) and had thrown the curtain open. I could see the doctors were doing their rounds, visiting each room for 10 minutes or so before moving on. But their behavior was different today. Whereas it was often Dr. Masterson giving me a smile or a nod when she noticed me looking at her, she was ignoring me and carrying a clipboard. Meanwhile, however, the other doctors who usually didn’t look my way until they got to my room seemed to be noticing me a bit more. I don’t know if my mom saw this or not, but I knew that something was not right.
After not too long, they were at the doors of the room next to mine, a baby who seemed to love Barney since his parents played it all the time on their TV. They had brought him to the window of his room so I could see him as I walked around the hallway. He couldn’t have been more than 18 months old although it was hard to tell since he wasn’t really walking and his thin, white blonde hair seemed more like what an infant would have than what a toddler might have accumulated by then. He too was in protective isolation, but more serious level than mine since his parents had to wear paper gowns and masks as they held him up so he could wave at me. I could hear the muffled speech through the walls as the doctors as they asked him parents their usual questions.
My heart jumped around as I listened to the glass doors slide back open and the doctors walk out one by one. Then a strange thing happened:
They walked right past my room without coming in and went on to the one on the other side of me.
Now I know my mother noticed this. We looked at each other with no words forming in throats. But we didn’t need words to convey the message that seemed to be running through both of our heads: there was something wrong.
It took a while for them to come back our way, and they had brought a woman with them. She had short curly brown hair, was as thin as a rail, and dressed like a frumpy school teacher instead of like a doctor. Dr. Masterson lead the usual questions and then introduced the woman by name. She was a psychologist. The woman smiled at me and my mother sympathetically. All that was missing was a Christ child in her lap with the way she looked at us so beautifically. It was as if pouring her heart out over us. I instantly disliked her.
While the psychologist was doing the Madonna thing, Dr. Masterson told me that she needed to speak to my mother outside. The rest of the herd followed them outside and the last one out slid my door closed. Madonna sat down on my bed and started asking me questions which I gave short answers to because a) I thought she was a fake and a flake who would be eaten for breakfast if I had been feeling better, and b) because I knew that she was trying to distract me from what was happening outside.
I understand why she was trying to keep me from turning around and watching the scene unfold outside those thick, sound-dampening glass doors, although I did watch anyways. I watched my mother and Dr. Masterson talk while my mother looked back at me and then Dr. Masterson look back without talking. Then my mother started crying. Dr. Masterson handed a tissue to her and put her hand on her shoulder. The other doctors were trying in vain to recreate Madonna’s plastic smile. They actually looked like their hearts were breaking through their smiles, though. I don’t remember who opened the door and let themselves in first: the doctors, Dr. Masterson, or my mother. That would have serious significance if it hadn’t been trumped by my focus on the fact that my mother was crying.
I had seen my mother cry before. When I was younger and frustrated her or said something mean as kids are apt to do, I was the cause of it. Lately, her ex-husband-to-be-but-not-soon-enough was the main source of her tears for acts I cannot even begin to list on this website. The fact that Dr. Masterson had made her cry caused my only thoughts to concentrate on anger for the doctor and panic about how to make my mom feel better. I can’t imagine the message that my eyes must have been showing at that moment before my mother spoke. Her eyes were red and puffy and still spilling tears over her lower lids although she had managed to stop sobbing. It seemed that every single ounce of her strength went into the four words she spoke next before collapsing into a heap in the chair where she had sat before those doctors came in. She called my name, bringing me back into focus, before adding the words, “You have cancer.”
Now, considering the reaction I had when it was simply anemia, you’d think I would have lost consciousness right then and there. But I was numb. Cancer is what happens in those stupid ass Lorene MacDonald books called stupid shit like “Too Young to Die” or “Teenage Angel Princess That Was Too Young to Die” with beautiful white girls in feathered hairstyles painted on their covers.
Not. To. Fucking. Me.
But I handled it. I hugged my mother and told her it was going to be okay. Dr. Masterson was quiet for a little while before going into second part of the usual doctor speech: what they were going to do to me.
She informed me that I was very lucky as I had come in with a very poor prognosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia and had we waited even a week longer there might not have been anything they could have done for me. I was to start intensive chemotherapy immediately. On that Monday, I would be getting a spinal tap, an intrathetical injection, and a chest catheter for the daily IV chemo treatments I was to receive for the next 6 months.
I called my best friend Charlene whose own father had been diagnosed with cancer a few months before. Just as she had when we sat in the principal’s office together and her mother told her over the phone what happened, she again was crying and there was nothing I could do for her to make her feel better except to tell her that everything was going to be okay. She said that she was going to come the next day to see me. She brought her older sister Kelly who drove, her little brother Freddy, and two of our friends with her. They tried to cheer me up although it was obvious that none of us knew what to say. I tried to make jokes about how I wouldn’t need to shave my legs once my hair had started to fall out (which was true). Charlene told me about what was happening in all of our classes. We became friends on the first day of school when by the time we got to the 4th class we had together, we just smiled and sat next to each other.
My mother finally went home on Sunday night and brought my little sister with her on Monday morning when I went into surgery. She seemed so afraid of hurting me at first, but soon she became her normal, sweet self again and made me laugh a few times before I went under.
I went back to school for only a few weeks in early April, when I walked into school with the lines on my face to mark where they pointed the radiation for my radiotherapy treatment. Charlene burst into tears when she saw me first saw my lines. The ass. principal tried to make me remove my ball cap in the cafeteria when I told him why I was wearing it. He made for a good carpet to walk all over for the rest of my years in high school after how horrible he felt for reprimanding me that day… 
I spent the last 2-1/2 months of 9th grade being tutored privately by a retired teacher whose own son had had leukemia.
There were a lot of happy times like when the doctors announced that I had responded so well they were reducing the length of my intensive protocol or when I sat at home one afternoon and pulled out all of my hair painlessly, making little afros with what came out, and shocking my mom who cried when she came home from work and saw my bald head (my sister thought I looked cool). I got to know lots of cool kids who had also undergone cancer treatment (although most of them were little when it happened) through two years of Camp Friendship, an overnight week-long camp for childhood cancer patients and survivors. I also underwent a lot of difficulties because of the poisons being put into me making me ill and having to deal with my mom’s ex-husband-to-be who seemed to turn up his hatred and used my illness to ridicule me and did not decrease his severe punishments over mild infractions (like the two weeks’ grounding I got for readjusting a seat in his car).
I braved it all though, finishing my treatment in 1996, ending almost 6 months early because of how well my leukemia responded to treatment. And in the spring of 1996, I left the US for the first time, traveling with my high school French Club to a whirlwind tour of Europe on scholarship, and developed the travel abroad bug that would eventually lead me to Taiwan five years later.
I don’t I can sleep tonight
Can’t wait till reading part III. Your writing really captivated me 
No hooks this time, please. I had enough of them in me today when I was out hiking. My legs are scratch pads. My fingertips are raw open wounds. Don’t make it worse.
Thank you for sharing my story with me. God bless.
Cool story, glad to hear you made it out intact… Must have certainly been a life-altering experience.
Maybe I should write about the time I almost died 
Nah, maybe another time.
Where’s the “I see dead people” part or the sponge bath with nurse Jenny.
:fume: :fume: :fume:
But glad to hear your still with us.
ImaniOU,
Thank you for helping me appreciate a sunny morning in Kaohsiung that much more today. I truly enjoyed reading this, another classic in my book.
bobepine
Simply. Amazing. :bravo:
Two of my friends had cancer–one in highschool and one in college. I was always too scared to ask them about it…
Thanks for sharing.
I went to bed before the 3rd part appeared but happily devoured it this morning. As mentioned, thanks for sharing.
Glad that I waited until all three parts were posted before reading. When I read part one I kinda thought…hmmm…sounds like Cancer. My grandfather died of cancer when I was very young but I still remember vividly how this robust old guy slowly withered away to nothing. Very happy you made it though.
Good on you girl.
I’m waiting for ImaniOU IV - Imani does Europe, or something.
You did a really good job writing, ImaniOU. I think you are very brave for sharing your story with us.
Thank you for sharing. I didn’t realize the world was such a scary place when I was young.
It was nice to see you the other day. Thank you for sharing your story.