Reaction Paper of Loss of a Child Due to Cancer

I found myself having quite a mix of reactions and emotions as I read this story of a mother, and family, losing their adolescent child to cancer. First, I felt hopeful by all the effort, and emotional energy, that was evident in the family’s actions. I thought it seemed like Aaron, a 14-year-old boy, had a fighting chance of survival, given the medical treatments and attention he was undergoing; especially since his parents were not giving up any hope and they were willing to go to any lengths to save their son. At first, it seemed as though medical science would prevail and effectively treat Aaron, allowing him to go on and live the rest of his life, which I had imagined would entail going to college, getting married, having kids and a successful career. I found myself thinking that he would be such a giving, kind, resilient and grateful teenager and adult that he would become accomplished and successful, and enjoy a wonderful family life.

I was also feeling inspired by this family’s seemingly heroic efforts and spirit. The writer’s brutal honesty, and poetic writing, also helped to captivate my attention, as I found myself raptured in her life’s experience. I was imagining what it would be like to have a son that age going through all of that. How would I respond? How would I handle that? What would I have done? Given that I did not come up with many thorough answers, my respect and admiration for this mother grew. And, my empathy for the rest of the family, including Aaron, deepened. My heart just went out to them. I could feel the unfathomable heartache and shock, and then grief from the loss, they must have all felt. What must Aaron have been feeling emotionally? How could a 14-year-old process such a tragic life experience? What would it be like going through treatment after treatment, not knowing if you were going to live or die? How would you grapple with that while living in physical agony and pain, and weakness? What would you do when your own psychologists, who were your supports, abandoned you? I simply do not know, and this not knowing leads to an awe-inspiring and saddened stance, realizing that nobody probably knows the answers to these questions; or even if they did, when faced with the reality of these circumstances, may react completely differently than they had previously thought. I believe people do their best at the moment when faced with decisions while in crisis. I would imagine there was a lot of bewilderment from the parents. Though it was not discussed explicitly, they must have been faced with questions, such as why us? Why him? Why now? Given the nature of Aaron’s disease though, they did not have the time or resources to fully process these thoughts and grumblings. For the most part, their outcry was not really heard, as the psychologists who had been their support, had left them. They did have a redeeming experience with a therapist who cried with them, and she did touch on it toward the end that there had been staff who were supportive and compassionate. What I heard in between the lines, though, was that their experiences with the staff were for the most part, absolutely appalling. Many of the medical staff had been experienced as abandoning and cold, and sometimes even offensive; and due to the nature of what they were facing and enduring, it was unthinkable that people, regardless of their professional role in the matter, could be so unfeeling and detached.

This leads me to wonder about my own empathy for the medical staff. If I were in a position working with the gravely ill and dying, how would I adapt to coping with the patients and their families? Would I be able to maintain vulnerability in order to remain compassionate and human toward the people with whom I was working? What kind of shifts in my character and makeup would I adopt, either out of conscious necessity or unconsciously, in order to maintain my dignity and be capable of performing my job without getting too burned out by it? How could one carry on if they allowed themselves to succumb to each patient’s and family’s pain? What would that do to a person? Would I be able to carry on? I imagine I would feel depleted day after day, getting to the point of being unable to perform the basic tasks of my job. Or, I imagine being so emotionally tapped out, that I would be merely be going through the motions, risking making sloppy mistakes or half-witted decisions.

If I were a medical professional, living in that place of feeling for my patients and their families, it would, inevitably, take its toll in one way or another. There is no way to predict exactly how I would respond, but having allowed myself to explore the question of my empathy for medical staff in these roles, I can see that there are reasons many of them have adopted the detached, uncaring response. I also think that many of them have probably not had tragic, life-altering experiences of their own, so they just do not have the capacities to understand what it could be like. But, having said that, I think most people would have a modicum of respect and appreciation for the reality of what seriously ill and dying people are going through. One would surmise that they could, even if only deep down, recognize the gravity of the experiences their patients find themselves in. I think about the volume of work they do; how many patients they see coming in and going out, either alive or dead and how after a while it could start to become part of the routine, a part of the process.

But, going back to the original story of how appalled and left in the cold this family felt by medical staff, I think about how, given their struggle with their own faith, they were so reliant and at the mercy of these professionals. I mean, in the midst of a fight for one’s life, Aaron, along with his parents and siblings, found themselves needing these people to pull through for him; and not only the people but the medicine, the science. They were faced with having to rely on stuff, on matter, to cure him, and the people who could hopefully carry it out. It makes me think about the depravity one could experience when relying on mere humans to deliver them from catastrophe. At times, humans can show up and pull through, but other times, due to one’s humanness and frailty, they simply cannot.

All of this reminds me of when my grandparents passed away 11 days apart from each other. My grandmother, who had become progressively ill, endured a lot of mistreatment by medical staff. There were misdiagnoses and long stays in hospitals, all in the hopes that she would get better. Many treatments and medicines were attempted, but she eventually got worse, not better. It was frustrating that at 69 years old, there was not anything more medical science and medical professionals could do for her. Eventually, she was diagnosed with a staff infection, that was resilient to even the toughest antibiotics. Though they gave her the strongest antibiotics they had available, it did not work. She then went on hospice and was taken to my mother’s where my family and I cared for her in the last 8 days of her life. Meanwhile, my grandfather who had been battling his own medical battle with cancer had died after hearing about my grandmother’s diagnosis. He was admitted to the emergency room and was diagnosed with having sepsis—internal bleeding that could not be stopped. In bringing all this up, I can see how in general, and specifically, the medical field is limited in its capacity to cure and heal. Sure, it has many successes and triumphs—even miracles at times—but it is flawed, not perfect, and therefore, cannot be the end all be all for people needing a cure or healing.

This leads me to what the author was sharing toward the end of the story about spirituality. The author recognized not only the flaws in her family’s spiritual and religious belief system but that the medical field, even the hospice field, was not adequately equipped to help them with their spiritual/faith crisis. It sounded to me like the author believed that if she and her family would have had more guidance or intervention in their lives, spiritually speaking, they would have been able to endure those days better and find peace or a purpose in their suffering.

After all, it has been written about and researched that if one cannot find meaning in their suffering, then the suffering leads one into despair and no way out. Whereas, when one can elicit some meaning in their trials and tribulations; when light can come out of darkness, beauty for ashes, then one can put the suffering in its proper context. It then takes on new meaning and a new perspective. For example, in “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Victor Frankl, as a survivor in the Nazi concentration camps, he eloquently wrote about his will to live that arose out of his love for his wife, and it was this love that he says empowered him to suffer in a way that did not allow him to give up. That allowed him to endure unimaginable circumstances. And he believed that if he were to die, that he had found meaning in his life that transcended his circumstances in the here and now. The mother who lost her child to cancer was longing for a similar ability to transcend her circumstances. Though it was not stated, I infer that that is exactly what she needed and desperately sought after in all of her activity after her son’s death.

I believe she was seeking out something that would redeem the tragedy; that would give her a perspective on it all which would make it somehow more tolerable. Not that anything could make losing a child easy, but the idea that there was perhaps a way that all of this might make sense, or a way to turn it all over, knowing that she did not need to make sense of it all, or right all the wrongs and injustices. That if she could rest in knowing that something or someone out there, bigger than her, was in charge and had it all in his hands, she could maybe find some peace, and be able to live the rest of her life unburdened by the tremendous loss of her son. Though I recognize that the loss would remain, because if she was able to fully let go of him, or the loss of him, that would be like forgetting him, and that would not be healing at all.

Reference

Berzof, J., Silverman, P. Living with Dying: A Handbook for End of Life Health Practitioners Columbia University Press: Chichester, New York.