Accents
‘Tahbso’: a recollection
Eight years ago to the day, Oct. 17, I was under the knife. My surgeon was one you could well speak of as first among equals: Dr. Nora Singson-Regollo. She it was who wiped out the swelling swarm of cantankerous cells in my tummy. With deep-felt thanks and the readers’ indulgence, I retrieve below my article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer of Oct. 14, 2001, under its HIGHBLOOD department. This cancer survivor found solace by bravely writing on, stringing along words in the state of lowest ebb.
In the days ahead, I will submit myself to a medical check-up with hope and prayers that I’ll come up with a clean bill of health. That suspended meanwhile, here’s my recollection when the illness that struck was thought to be a recurrence of the dread disease:
Soon I will have to enter the hospital again. I have to undergo another check-up, my fourth after the “Tahbso” (the convenient short term for total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy). My reproductive innards – ovary, fallopian tube, uterus – were scooped out. Being past reproductive age, what need have I for them? Besides, I have already given birth four times. It’s better to have them removed to avoid their becoming host to further unwanted cell growth.
The Tahbso resulted in a painful conclusion I have learned to live with: ovarian cancer.
With the verdict having been laid down, the doctor’s order was check-up after every six months, which I ignored. The gap would lengthen to seven, sometimes nine months before I would submit myself to a check-up because I felt that I was in tip-top shape and asking for a hospital admission in my state of health was some kind of a joke. I gained weight and, they say, looked so much younger with my crop of black hair having returned after chemotherapy. Even the streaks of silver that gave away the age of this sixtysomething had disappeared.
Last year’s “work-up” (the attending nurse said this is the more appropriate term) was a different story. It brought a heck of a scare to my family. When I nearly passed out after a long drawn-out cough, instant hospital admission was a must. No reason to delay the check-up. The hubby and my daughters across the ocean burned the wires. In the haze of hospital hurry-scurry, I heard my husband saying over the phone: “A severe case of pneumonitis.”
Even if she was there on the other side of the globe, it was as if I could see the teardrops roll down my daughter’s cheeks. Relief must have induced the tears. But I did hear my daughter Randy Raissa heave a sigh of relief as soon as she heard that I only had pneumonitis, that indeed I was in complete remission from the dreaded disease, the Big C no less. I thought I heard, too, a long pause of silent prayer. The expanse of intergalactic space could not hide the crack in Randy’s voice, unable as she was--she a physician--to care for her mother, a cancer survivor.
There are persons who, by the sheer force of personality, carry with them strength, confidence and peace and impart these to the fellow across, especially to one who is hooked up to the I.V. as this patient was. Dr. Anita Lacuesta-Jesena, oncologist, (thank you so much), seemed to drive away the vermins every time she came to visit me. She exuded overpowering calm that I needed during the long wait (the hours are interminable to a patient) for the results of the ultrasound, X-ray, sputum culture, blood chem and CA [cancer antigen] marker.
The result of the tests: a bad case of pneumonia. Didn’t I say that I told my daughter there was remission, meaning no recurrence of the Big C? Pneumonia is curable by a massive infusion of anti-biotic. The doctor said that a week in the hospital room and another week at home would be good for me.
To this day, there is no definitive cure for the Big C. There is no guarantee that six sessions of chemotherapy that made me bald for months will completely make the cancer cells disappear. But I am hoping for a medical breakthrough that will finally conquer cancer.
Last year I was assigned to Room 407 situated on the west side of St. Paul’s Hospital, which gave me a good view of the sunset. I wonder if I’d be occupying the same room when I go back. Room 407 provided a fabulous sunset, stirring in me poetic thoughts, leaving me to fathom life’s unfathomables, even as the golden rays glistened through the mist in my eyes. I remember how the setting sun had evoked these closing lines from William Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality”:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Sunsets through a hospital window make us remember especially the splendors in the meadowland of our past. And remembering, dear readers, is happiness enough.
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)