Weaving magic

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Sonia B. SyGaco is a fiction writer and holds a master’s degree in creative writing at Silliman University. Her creative works have appeared in Philippine Free Press, Philippine Graphic Magazine, in the United States, Australia, and Malaysia. “Weaving Magic” is a slice of life story that changed her perspective in life.

Memoirs of life driving: Beat the timeline. With two passengers on board, Anne Didion, author of best seller The Year of Magical Thinking, begins, “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to drink and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.” While the second driver carries three others. She, too, like Anne, utters some magical chants, hoping to bring something good before the year ends.

A day before New Year’s Eve of 2003, Anne Didion wrestled with the task of writing John Gregory Dunne’s obituary. Slumped motionless during dinner, John was pronounced dead by the paramedics. The writer learned what would happen when the heart failed to work. This, in turn, led to Anne’s painful review of all the whys and ifs surrounding John’s death. Letting go of him was not easy for her. Both were acclaimed writers and shared a life together.

Her grief rolled upon daughter Quintana for whom both she and John had sought treatment in New York. Quintana battled for her life in the intensive care unit at Beth Israel North. The sick daughter lay in a coma for five days as pneumonia complications took their toll.

Driving the same path as Anne, I remembered losing so much of my time in Manila in the search for a physician who could answer the ailment that plagued my husband. I came to know what Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) was. Acid flowed back from the weakened valve located on top of his stomach to the esophagus. Constricting the esophageal passage, acid reflux even traveled as far as his throat.

Then came the time when my husband’s body weight dropped tremendously.

The gastroenterologist remarked, “There is nothing I can do about your situation.”

Was I hearing it right? Could he do nothing about it? The words came like a hammer blow — this medical prognosis coming as it did from a top-notch doctor. We were facing the dead-end of any hope for a recovery. A medical odyssey had now become necessary for him — a journey to San Francisco where most of his relatives lived.

Little did I know that a sick man would lose his ability to make decisions. When his short stay in America became insignificant, I advised him to return home. We were then resigned to the prospect of surgery and the resulting long months of recovery. Thus, I became interested in a laparoscope operation. By February, he had an operation that almost took his life, complaining of having difficulty in breathing,

Months later, his swallowing became more painstaking, which compelled us both to further our queries in New York. Unlike Manila, where medical examinations took over a month to complete, this time a wireless capsule was embedded inside the stomach. This single-use pill accurately captured thousands of pictures of the small intestinal lining then sent back through a small receiver placed on his belt. Days after, this electronic pill passed out naturally from his body.

When the results were in, Dr. Lawrence Cohen, of the New York Gastroenterology Associates, opted for “no surgery,” declaring that acid reflux was controlled. Dr. Cohen further expressed his opinion that the surgical wrap around the gastric sphincter was just too tight for food to pass through. He predicted that it would expand in due time and declared that another surgery was too premature at the moment. Dr. Barry Salky, on the other hand, voted that surgery was necessary and that deletion wouldn’t work. Embraced by the difficulty of deciding which table to turn to, we decided to go home to Dumaguete and to postpone any procedure.

Life in the house was no different. My husband continued to live as a recluse since nothing was getting any better. Food continued to stick in his esophagus.

Two weeks later, I discovered a purple bruise on my son’s leg and begged him to watch his step. I had neither the energy to monitor him closely nor the power to tame him. A toddler would always remain within his world of play. That night, he asked for a cookie and this unwittingly led to a horrifying scenario. By dawn, blood… was all over my son’s pillow. We rushed him to the hospital and were relieved that bleeding from his gums had stopped. But in the succeeding hours he was becoming a speckled trout with spots all over his body.

The bone marrow test confirmed enough production of red blood cells. This gave me an immediate relief that leukemia had not taken him. The next minute, someone phoned me that my mother who worked in a judiciary court was not feeling well and needed to be fetched from her office. I responded immediately. I recognized Mom’s twitching mouth and knew that she was suffering a mild stroke. I felt partly to blame for allowing her to stay with me every night in the hospital since my son was too young to be left alone.

To make crucial decisions on three medical cases brought me to the Scriptures — the threshold of Job’s pain. I was leaping between Mom’s room, which was on the third floor, and the fourth floor where my son was confined. Now that the bruises had appeared and reappeared after leaving the hospital twice, I was forced to get a US visa for Keanu. With an arranged schedule for surgery in New York, we might as well bring our son with us for treatment if things here wouldn’t work out for him.

It did work out. My drive down life’s road was one hellish adventure. My husband had his surgery at Mt. Sinai, Keanu’s blood disease completely healed, and Mom took retirement as an option.

Anne Didion wrote her story nine months after her husband’s death and after publication, Quintana’s death soon followed. Anne Didion and I lived the odds — odds that would force anyone to accept uncertainty, lives suddenly colored in monochrome gray.

Didion wrote, “Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

It took me six years to write my own version. I lived with the nightmares of the whys and ifs. Like her story, I too was weaving silently in the impossible; the tail-end of 2003 and 2004 were moments of magical thinking.