A Miracle in the Making

It didn't seem completely real when I learned that my cousin, Linda - for all practical purposes, the only living blood kin I have left - had been diagnosed with liver cancer. Try as I might, I couldn't get the words to make sense and when I finally did, it was too dreadful to contemplate.

While I was waiting for the initial shock to wear off and vainly searching for something comforting to tell her, she reverted (as she almost always does) to her usual resilient, reassuring, and optimistic self. She updated me about treatment options and what the doctors were and weren't recommending and complained regularly and usually sarcastically about the complexity of navigating the system. She made trip after trip from Tallahassee to Gainesville for a never ending parade of tests and bloodwork and evaluations and then more of each. I learned that radiation wasn't anyone's favorite idea, that tumor ablation wasn't likely to be successful and that she was being considered a candidate for surgery. Sometime, I think it was in June, she began easing us and herself into the prospect of a liver transplant. The words paralyzed me and though I refused to admit it and certainly never put it into words, a part of me began preparing for her to die. Even when she made it onto the transplant list, I wouldn't allow myself to see a miracle in the making. Morbid as it was, I couldn't shake the thought that more people died waiting on transplants than survived. It felt much too close to desperation.

Linda, of course, was having none of it. Her emails stayed philosophical and accepting but still confident. She and Robin, life partners for some 40 years, set about making preparations to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. They arranged for the house to be looked after, the cat tended, the wild birds fed. They de-cluttered with a vengeance that, under the circumstances, I found admirable if not flat out heroic.

The call came in August and in a matter of hours, they were on their way. I sat in front of my computer and tried to work through a maze of emotions but all I felt was a scattery kind of hope with a side dish of terror. I couldn't find words through the worry and apprehension and after awhile, I gave up and settled for trying to keep myself distracted. It was as close to giving up my agnosticism as I've ever come.

Fast forward a week, and she's out of ICU, off the ventilator, and feasting on watered down applesauce and yogurt with chicken and rice waiting in the wings. Her sense of humor is intact.

“Robin's camping out in my room again,” she texts me, “Where are the marshmallows?”

“Did you remember the fire permit?” I text back.

There's a pause and then the words “Oh, shit.....” and a downcast smiley face appear on my phone followed by “I knew there was something I forgot!”. I have to laugh.

When you're lost and don't know what's around the next corner, it's hard to prepare for what life can and will throw at you and even if you could be ready, there are things you simply don't allow yourself to think about. I never imagined I'd have a friend be murdered, or lose so many dear people to cancer, or have a cousin who needed and got a liver transplant. I never thought about getting to be my age and being surrounded by empty spaces. Even with reality staring me square in the face, I still try not to think about it. My cousin Linda has beaten back adversity her entire life. It's not so farfetched to think that she earned this chance. She and Robin ride out the hurricane in the hospital and just a day or two later are released and head for home.

Miracles happen every day and sometimes we don't notice but here's the lesson: Never underestimate an old broad with blood that doesn't clot and a second hand liver. Way to go, cuz.