This week I traveled to Houston, TX. What’s in Houston might you ask…
Houston has been for several weeks now the location of Aloha Base Camp: a room at the Jesse H. Jones Rotary House, only a skybridge away from MD Anderson. If you’re lucky, you’ve never heard of MD Anderson and you have no idea what I’m talking about.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has ranked #1 in cancer care in the “America’s Best Hospitals” survey published in U.S. News & World Report for eight of the past 10 years, including 2011. When you have been living with stage 4 Metastatic cancer for over 2-years and you just got diagnosed with an additional cancer in your spinal fluid, when you need a shunt in your head to drain fluid down to your belly and an Ommaya reservoir to allow intra-cranial chemotherapy, that’s where you want to be. So that’s where Team Tigger has set up camp, affectionately nicknamed Aloha Base Camp.
My friend V. has been on a healing mission since she was diagnosed with Lobular Carcinoma breast cancer in the summer of 2009. That mission first took her to Atlanta, GA, where she was treated at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University. The goal was to get closer to her friends and family; and that’s where Team Tigger started to form: V.’s husband, her family, her childhood friends. All along, V. has wanted us to trust ”To fear for me is not loving me” she said in her CaringBridge Diary. She always thought, and still thinks, that she will beat that cancer. Both of them.
On June 16, 2010 V. celebrated her 45th birthday in Atlanta. In February of 2011, she was feeling good enough to move back to Maui, HI. Before this week, the last time I saw V. was in September, in Las Vegas, NV where she had a celebration for life with her 17 closest girl friends. Those women finished putting the T behind Team Tigger and when in December V. had to be rushed to MD Anderson developed an intricate support system that I’m extremely grateful to be a part of.
So, when I disappeared for a few days last week, that’s where I was, at Aloha Base Camp. It was my turn to take care of our friend. I helped preparing her meals, and was on pill-watch because I’m better at following a schedule than her big Australian Teddy Bear of a husband. I was a sounding board for the rest of the team (husband, dad and stepmom), and a presence and source of entertainment for V.
Again V. is a miracle. I was expecting to find a sick person, I found a healing person. V.’s favorite joke: “you girls are so crazy that all of you know that I pooped before I even get out of the bathroom”. Yup, that’s how tight the Ocean 17 net is. V.’s laughter is contagious.
V.’s stepmom nicknamed me “The Wise One” because I tried to direct all my love and energy into appeasing the fears and the anger that we all develop against cancer. I concentrated on trying to bring everyone together into a strong loving bound. I tried to stay objective and at peace. I absorbed. I discovered that 45 minutes can feel like hours when you are witnessing a friend being in pain and you know that there’s a way to relieve her but you can’t and you have to wait. I realized that the family ties are among the strongest and the weakest at the same time. I experienced empathy in its purest, rawest, draining form.
Everyday I try to respect V.’s request and not to fear. She gave me this necklace that says “Trust” and I’m caring it around my neck. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little afraid of letting go of my fear and simply trust. But for V. I’ll try to take the leap of faith, because I don’t think I’m the Wise One, I think she is.
It was very hard to find one picture to summarize an entire year. So I decided to pick the one that represents the highest values that I encountered in 2011: friendship, support, hunger for life, positive thinking.