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Jul. 15th, 2008 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI went to my research assistant's funeral today.
Awilda was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a year and a half ago. Her prognosis fluctuated wildly, and every time they revised her treatment plan it was more brutal.
Pancreatic cancer is about as ugly as it gets.
She had chemo, radiation, surgery, more chemo, more radiation, additional surgical procedures. She never really had a period of health, not after she first got sick. Even when the cancer was under control she had massive problems with pain and wasting. And then the cancer came back. Back and back everywhere.
For small stretches of time, she came into work. A few hours a day, a few days a week. She wasn't capable of doing much - it was sometimes a strain to think of ways she could be useful - but it seemed to help her. And it preserved the illusion that she was still working for us, so that she could keep drawing paychecks after she'd long used up her sick leave, annual leave, and emergency extra leave. It was unimaginable, to suggest that she go on disability - as long as she kept trying. Just before the metastases, she even started seeing a few clients again.
I saw her in the hospital the day after the oncologists told her there was nothing more they could do for her. (I kept thinking of a bitter, awful joke my sister told me when she was in medical school: Why do they have nails in coffins? To keep the oncologists out.) At that point she almost seemed liberated by their diagnosis. She laughed, talked, comforted me kindly. She seemed to be on the other side of a divide, still close enough to communicate but slowly drifting away from the things of our world. She was releasing her grip on life after an unimaginably hard struggle, and that seemed to bring her peace.
It would have been a good place for it to end, but cancer doesn't work like that.
I saw her for the last time last Tuesday. Her brother called, told me that they thought it would be soon, said that I could visit if I liked. She was at home. Mercifully, they don't make you die in hospitals these days. I made the long drive down to see her.
I hadn't thought that she could lose more weight, but she had. I'd estimate that she weighed less than 75 pounds. She lay in a hospital bed with her arms drawn up in odd postures that reminded me of severe developmental disability. When I came into the room her eyes opened halfway, sightlessly. She had been blind for a few days. Her family thought she could hear voices, but she certainly gave no sign that she was aware of my presence as I sat and spoke to her. She returned no pressure when I held her hand. Her breaths rasped horribly, each one an enormous effort. I kissed her on the forehead when I left, and again her eyes opened partway. Unseeing. Reflexively. Her family told me that she'd stopped drinking even the smallest trickle of water; all they could do was moisten her lips.
It took her another two days to die.
The service today was lovely. They'd found a priest who was fluent in Spanish - Awilda was Puerto Rican, and her mother speaks almost no English - and he switched back and forth, repeating himself in English and Spanish, for everything but the formal liturgy. I'd never been to a Catholic funeral before. I was particularly touched when he sprinkled water over her picture and the box containing her ashes, symbolically evoking her baptism. I found myself wondering, a little bit, what it's like to have faith in the Resurrection.
I feel that I ought to write something about her life, but today her death is weighing on me too heavily for that. Maybe another time.
Awilda was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a year and a half ago. Her prognosis fluctuated wildly, and every time they revised her treatment plan it was more brutal.
Pancreatic cancer is about as ugly as it gets.
She had chemo, radiation, surgery, more chemo, more radiation, additional surgical procedures. She never really had a period of health, not after she first got sick. Even when the cancer was under control she had massive problems with pain and wasting. And then the cancer came back. Back and back everywhere.
For small stretches of time, she came into work. A few hours a day, a few days a week. She wasn't capable of doing much - it was sometimes a strain to think of ways she could be useful - but it seemed to help her. And it preserved the illusion that she was still working for us, so that she could keep drawing paychecks after she'd long used up her sick leave, annual leave, and emergency extra leave. It was unimaginable, to suggest that she go on disability - as long as she kept trying. Just before the metastases, she even started seeing a few clients again.
I saw her in the hospital the day after the oncologists told her there was nothing more they could do for her. (I kept thinking of a bitter, awful joke my sister told me when she was in medical school: Why do they have nails in coffins? To keep the oncologists out.) At that point she almost seemed liberated by their diagnosis. She laughed, talked, comforted me kindly. She seemed to be on the other side of a divide, still close enough to communicate but slowly drifting away from the things of our world. She was releasing her grip on life after an unimaginably hard struggle, and that seemed to bring her peace.
It would have been a good place for it to end, but cancer doesn't work like that.
I saw her for the last time last Tuesday. Her brother called, told me that they thought it would be soon, said that I could visit if I liked. She was at home. Mercifully, they don't make you die in hospitals these days. I made the long drive down to see her.
I hadn't thought that she could lose more weight, but she had. I'd estimate that she weighed less than 75 pounds. She lay in a hospital bed with her arms drawn up in odd postures that reminded me of severe developmental disability. When I came into the room her eyes opened halfway, sightlessly. She had been blind for a few days. Her family thought she could hear voices, but she certainly gave no sign that she was aware of my presence as I sat and spoke to her. She returned no pressure when I held her hand. Her breaths rasped horribly, each one an enormous effort. I kissed her on the forehead when I left, and again her eyes opened partway. Unseeing. Reflexively. Her family told me that she'd stopped drinking even the smallest trickle of water; all they could do was moisten her lips.
It took her another two days to die.
The service today was lovely. They'd found a priest who was fluent in Spanish - Awilda was Puerto Rican, and her mother speaks almost no English - and he switched back and forth, repeating himself in English and Spanish, for everything but the formal liturgy. I'd never been to a Catholic funeral before. I was particularly touched when he sprinkled water over her picture and the box containing her ashes, symbolically evoking her baptism. I found myself wondering, a little bit, what it's like to have faith in the Resurrection.
I feel that I ought to write something about her life, but today her death is weighing on me too heavily for that. Maybe another time.
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Date: 2008-07-15 09:02 pm (UTC)May Awilda rest in peace and be remembered well, and may all who cared for her find comfort in memory.