“I used to complain about the traffic!” Hailey looked at me with her bright round eyes, swollen with tears. “I can’t believe that anyone would even worry about traffic or anything else. I’d be happy if I hobbled around on one leg for the rest of my life—if only I could just live.”
Hailey had just turned thirty when she was diagnosed with advanced cancer. After months of suffering a garden variety of complaints that doctors dismissed with differential diagnosis, Hailey’s arm snapped. A tumor had grown into her elbow and within a matter of days, Hailey was found to have multiple tumors rapidly growing throughout her body.
Few people have gone to visit Hailey since her cancer has reached its final stages. Many give her words of encouragement over the internet on Facebook and email, but they all basically say the same thing. ”Get well soon,” “We Miss You,” ”Keep fighting.”
I think that most people are seeing something within themselves as they witness the suffering stages that Hailey continues to endure. Besides the normal grieving stages of denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression and reflection, reconstruction and working through, and finally acceptance—there’s a gaping wonder that pulls at our heart.
Where is Hailey going after she’s gone? When and how am I going when I pass? Where Hailey may have only days to figure this out, those of us who are not medically terminal, wonder if a senseless tragedy might take us too soon as well.
Since Hailey’s diagnosis, I’ve been suffering a mild case of hypochondria. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and start palpating my body for masses. I pay more attention to a sneeze from my kids, my cats, and even my bird. Psychosomatically, my elbow hurts in the same area where Hailey’s is fractured.
As a nurse, there is no denying that I’ve witnessed countless miracles of healing. We’ve all heard stories of rampaged cancer cells tamed within moments of death and the person lived to tell of their near death experience. With stages of faith, I pray for Hailey’s healing.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not true I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am. You know the way to the place that I am going.” –John 14 1-4
This was the only reassurance that I share with Hailey, only because I’m not experiencing life in the way that she is. I can only blindly guide her to God’s promises and what His desire might be for her. I don’t know why some people are healed and some are not. I only believe that death should be the final healing.
