I haven't been up to posting in a little while mainly because the past few days, I've been living on eggshells. Just to sum up for those who don't know, I'm a very hard person to get to know. I tend to keep my feelings to myself, and build up walls of protection from outsiders. Some could say it's issues from my mom or my dad, whatever-they can kick rocks, but it's just because I don't want to be hurt. It was so bad in high school that my nickname amongst my posse was "Shady", just because I played my cards close to the chest and had no problem lashing out to those who hurt me in any manner. It was my way of protecting myself. Plain and simple. Anyway, when I first came to Chicago, I was a very sad little girl. In a lot of ways, I felt alone and I had no idea if I'd ever be friends with anyone. I was confused, depressed and just out of sorts adjusting to a life in the Midwest. Well, that soon changed with the unlikely friendship that Kevin gave me.
Kevin is the one person I've been able to turn to when I had to experience all the dramatic events of life, from losing someone close to me, to starting a new life in a new place and finding myself, and even being my moral compass when I felt lost. It was no surprise that he felt he could turn to me, and on one night in 2002, a night that I will never forget for the rest of my life, as I studied and resided in Washington D.C, he told me he had leukemia. To be specific, he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and he was diagnosed when he noticed his lymph nodes were enlarged, and after tests, found that his spleen was slightly enlarged as well. That phone call was the worst because he sounded so sad, very unlike the usual rambunctious style of his usual conversations. He seemed sad, but hopeful, and so I was as well.
I researched it for hours after talking to him. I found out the symptoms, the treatment, the life expectancy, all of it and was unsatisfied. I questioned medical students, talked to doctors, did as much research as I could until I felt like I knew all there was to know. When he called me after the doctors had officially diagnosed him, I asked him for his doctor's information, and with his permission, spoke to his doctor for hours about his condition. While Kevin focused on getting better, I focused on the statistics. I wondered out loud if chemo, radiation and surgery were viable treatments for him, due to his slow immune system, and I was the one who took a week off from school to return to Chicago so that he could have my hand to hold while he went in for exploratory surgery. When he couldn't walk, he leaned on me, and when he couldn't get up from the bed to hug me, I climbed in the bed with him. When he couldn't bathe, I washed him and shaved his face, and I was his shoulder to cry on. I'd seen more sides of him than anyone, and I told him, I promised him, that even though the cancer was in his body, it would be our fight, and I would never leave him to fight alone.
In retrospect, those two years I was away from him while in DC were the most terrible, because I could not see him everyday or talk to him every second. When I started to realize that the school was not the school I wanted, I began to think, "If I returned home, I could be there..." and so, I left. Partly for Kevin, partly for me, all because I knew if the shoe was on the other food, he'd have done it for me, no hesitation. When he got better in 2005, was deemed cancer-free and was told by his doctors that he could go to school, I was the happiest person in the world. I saw him drive off to Georgetown and I thought life would be perfect for him after that...and I thought the world had yet to see all that he had to offer. In some ways, I would prove to be wrong.
He started his degree in the fall of 2005. He wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to help people who had the same illness he did, and gain as much understanding of the science that involves cancer in the human body...he volunteered at a children's cancer ward, and he spent time reading about cancer cells. He often spoke candidly about his illness, and would start the statements with "I am a cancer survivor." As the year progressed, he started to develop a general exhaustion. He'd sleep whenever he wasn't in class, and he'd pick at food. We started weekly iChat sessions, and I saw his skin texture change, his eyes become hollow and all the weight he'd gained go away. So, in the fall of 2006, when the change was too much for me to bear, I asked him to go to the doctor. He went, and when he came back, the prognosis was horrible, the cancer had returned. This time, it was cancer in his blood.
So, because it was around Christmas break, he decided that he'd return to Chicago to get his treatments, and return in time to make up his missed classes during the summer, and resume his schedule in the fall semester of 2007. He came home, in his Georgetown sweats and I barely recognized him, this thin man who resembled my close friend, whose eyes told stories of pain, heartache and disappointment, but mostly of frustration with himself for falling ill. I spotted him, and when I saw him, I threw my arms around him and we cried. He smelled like Kevin, he smelled like home.
I can remember the day of the blood transfusion, how we all waited while the doctors drained as much blood out of Kevin as they could, and infused him with the blood all of Kevin's friends and I gave them earlier. I actually gave the doctors more than I was supposed to, but I did not mind because for once, my exhaustion matched Kevin's. I stayed with him until he woke up, and I watched as the color returned to his face, as his eyes became clearer and he smiled that broad grin of his...he only asked me one thing, "When can we eat?" I knew then he was better, that my dearest friend, who ate family dinners from Pepe's like most people eat a White Castle cheeseburger, had returned. Days later, he had a bone marrow transplant, and had to spend two days in an isolation chamber, but he wrote things constantly. He didn't sleep, and all he thought of was things to do when he was out of his "medical jail". He wanted to see the Louvre in Paris, the Mountains of Colorado, the waters of the Nile. In those times, he had so many dreams.
He would return to Georgetown for two more semesters, and excelled in areas of science, specifically chemistry and biology, almost as if he understood the books without reading them, since the story of cells and their division had ravaged 5 years of his life. Finally, after falling ill again and receiving a so-so prognosis, he decided to return to Chicago for a second opinion and be with his family, his friends and me. He would go through chemo again, as well as surgeries to remove one of his kidneys, part of his liver and scar tissues on his lungs, and after changing his diet, forgoing red meat, and eating more holistically, drinking tea and working out in the gym, he became stronger, and gained all his weight back. He was deemed strong enough to transfer to a local school and take classes there for a semester. However, after falling ill in May of 2008, after he made a declaration that he was not going to subject himself to any further treatment; he was told that the cancer had gone to the one place they were hoping it did not travel to: his pancreas.
When they told him, his eyes were teary and he again felt that same cloud of disappointment that hindered him before, he slumped in the chair and let his weight collapse into it, and he looked at me. I kept looking at the doctor, and I asked what I knew Kevin wanted to, but couldn't. "How long?" The doctor took a breath and looked at the two of us, and told us that because Kevin was opting against treatment, depending on how aggressive it was, it could be weeks or months. Not years. Without looking at Kevin, I took his hand and held it. Before I could ask, I heard his voice ask, "What can we do?" The doctor said, "We will figure it out." But I knew that Kevin already knew what he wanted to do.
For years, it had been our battle, and our fight. But I knew that it was time to let him fight it alone. But how to let him go? How to kiss him and tell him I loved him, letting him carry the burden of the worrying and the fighting alone? How to subject him to such a harsh concept? We both knew it would be a hard idea for me, so due to that and other reasons, Kevin went to California to be with his grandmother..to let her care for him in his supposed final days. Kevin's dream didn't become about seeing the world and all of its beauty, it became simply just to be able to live in it. He began to distance himself from me, to not try to lean on me as much during the time he spent in California, to worry more about being with his dad and his grandmother, to spend his days surfing and walking the beach, and to spend his nights sitting by the ocean.
Then Friday, he fell into a coma after his heart stopped. This happened once before, but he woke up right away. Now, it's not the case. Part of me wants him to wake up, and part of me is ready to let him sleep forever...rest from the pain, the sorrow and the misery of this world. I don't know which one to pray for, and I find myself so conflicted. I don't want him to die, but how much longer will he live? I just pray that he wakes up and walks out of the hospital- one of his least favorite places to be and hopefully, not the last.
