The Imposing Poppy
On the first day of this year, we sat down to discuss how we would celebrate my son’s 50th birthday in September. He was resolute that he didn’t want a huge birthday bash, like he had in previous ‘round’ birthdays. Now furnished with his third brain tumour, he would prefer a small occasion. After further discussion, I reserved a holiday for a week at the Royal Hotel in San Remo, feeling that a resort on the Italian coast in September was ideal, with the absence of school holidays in Europe. While we were about it, I also reserved at our favourite hotel in Montreux, to coincide with the annual Jazz Festival. As my son is no longer so keen on flying with the accompanying stress, we were pleased that both locations could be easily accessed by car from home.
While this was going on, I had the uneasy feeling since January that maybe I should have another colonoscopy, as things seemed to be calling for it in my nether regions. I gently tried to persuade the doctor’s receptionist that I couldn’t wait another six months as my instincts told me, an element of urgency could be applied. She was similarly determined that the doctor simply had no appointments earlier than June, and that it had only been two years since the previous examination. (Many doctors in Switzerland don’t work a 5-day week, because they earn enough with less dedication). After much insistence on my part, I finally secured an appointment in April, whereupon said doctor calmly announced, that there was no question about it, I had a cancerous tumour. It was apparently quite a sizeable object, and the doctor started mumbling some incoherent apology, that he must have overseen it at the last check-up. Apologies in retrospect weren’t awfully beneficial in my situation at that moment.
It took a while until the wheels of action kicked off, but I was prescribed the highest dose of chemotherapy and 25 sessions of radiation. This commenced mid-May, and I was still optimistically looking forward to our long-awaited trips. However, by mid-June, when I was urgently transported to hospital with severe side effects from the treatment, it became apparent, after nearly three weeks in hospital, that I wouldn’t be going anywhere this summer. At the beginning of August, in a another rather more robust hospital I went through an operation to remove the remains of the tumour. It then transpired, that the chemotherapy and radiation hadn’t only nearly finished me off, it had actually killed off the tumour, but my recovery was nonetheless seriously impacted and is still ongoing.
Having by now lost 20 kilos in body weight, and still trying to process my digestion in all its phases, it has made me acutely aware of how fast the fine thread of health can change the course of life. In my case, there is every expectation that this change is only temporary, for which I am truly thankful. I’ve had my share of medical issues, but mostly mechanical body parts suffering from ‘mature’ fatigue. However, I never felt so close to death as I did during this time. But, while I sojourned in the first horrific phase in hospital, like a dormant sloth, I occasionally summoned up the energy to peer out of the window. My eyes unwittingly rested on some poppies in the garden below. I became aware during more lucid moments that they seemed to be claiming my attention with their insistent bright red petals. Despite my traumatic state, these little flowers made me feel immensely happy. I don’t remember the image of poppies ever filling me with such serenity and the feeling that everything is well in my world. Had I really been so distracted/busy all my life, that I failed to notice them or grasp their effect on me? It seems that I had to renounce all my physical faculties first, to respect these humble gifts of nature. These poignant little treasures had actually invaded my awareness and delivered me with the therapy I so desperately craved.
Photo: pexels / Roon-Z