In the Darkness

I have spent the greater part of the past four months living on an Oncology floor. We live in a world of darkness here where there is little room for light to shine. Hope is something to fight for, faith is a constant choice and peace seems like a thing of the distant past. There are questions that will never get answered and a sadness that floats through the hall like the crisp autumn breeze. You can feel it against your skin as you pass someone in the hall. Each time someone dies we all feel it. Like a stone being thrown in a quiet pond, the place of impact feels it the most, but the ripples continue outward touching us all. The closer you are to the family the more you feel it, but everyone on the floor feels it a little. There is a camaraderie between everyone who has walked down this path with you or before you. 

The pain along this journey is insurmountable, but by far the most difficult part is the loss of control. It hits on a broad spectrum with diagnosis and day by day it begins to consume every last detail of your life. Layer by layer I have continued to lose control. It started with the unknowns of cancer, next it was being separated from my other child and then having to step down from my job. But now I long for control in the mundane. I’d just like to know when the doctors are stopping by each morning for rounds so I know when to shower and when I can run downstairs for coffee. But I dont even have control over that.

Izzy is doing well today except for some nausea. This week she finally made it out of her room after thirty five days in isolation from C-Diff. She is thrilled to be going on walks downstairs again and is back to painting in the playroom. They said she could ‘maybe come home tomorrow’ but they’ve been saying that since Tuesday. The new feeding tube has created problems of it’s own but hopefully soon they will release us anyway. I would love for us all to have a long week home together before round six. And I know she would love to be home for Halloween to dress up and just be a kid. 

I always wonder after I write if I have accurately portrayed our journey. I read and reread each entry before finally hitting ‘post.’ I care little about the typos or grammatical errors. Of greater importance to me is if I’ve done our journey justice. Or the opposite, have I over done it? I can’t say for sure on the first, but I’ll tell you that I have decided it would be impossible to over dramatize this experience. Best I try, and I will keep trying, I do not think there are words in the English language that fully capture what’s taking place in my heart. Pain this deep can only be communicated through a secret, unspoken language that I have become more fluent in each day. Because each person’s journey through this type of pain is so vastly different, it’s a language only truly understood between the Creator and it’s creation. I find myself thankful to know the only other One who speaks it. Perhaps you too have discovered it along your own journey.