“SO, THIS MUST BE AN INTERVENTION.”
Kendra watched as Trey, Molly, and Cyd filed into her room.
Trey nodded without apology. “That’s exactly what it is, Ken. You’re saying you’re not going to do chemo.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m talking to Dr. Contee about it today.”
Her friends positioned themselves at various spots on her bed. Lance had tried yesterday, but he didn’t get farther than the door.
“It sounds like you’re giving up,” Trey said, “and we want you to fight.”
“You want me to fight.” Kendra had been on a low boil for days, and it didn’t take much to turn it up. “Do you even know what that means?”
Trey sat closest. “Ken, I know how hard this is. I know—”
Kendra raised a hand partway. “All of you are here out of love, and I appreciate that. But please don’t tell me you know how hard this is. You can’t know. I don’t even tell you because I’d be talking about it 24-7.” She looked away. “You have no idea.”
“Can you tell us?” Molly asked.
“Tell you what?”
“Help us understand what you go through,” Molly said. “We see you wincing and commenting here and there, and even getting sick sometimes. But what’s it actually like for you, going through chemo?”
Kendra gave it some thought. Not to search for words—she had the words. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk at all, let alone about her illness, especially when the stated intent of the visit was to change her mind. But maybe she could help them see where she was coming from . . .
“Right now,” Kendra said, “it hurts to talk to you. It often hurts, but I’ve just gotten used to talking through it. The inside of my mouth has sores that get so painful, sometimes it hurts to swallow water. The other day a pill got stuck in my throat. Wouldn’t go down, couldn’t spit it back up. After several minutes of panic, it finally moved.”
Cyd moved up quietly and rested a hand on Kendra.
“And speaking of my mouth,” Kendra said, “most of what I eat tastes like a metal ashtray. I don’t complain because I don’t want you all to feel bad when I can’t enjoy the food you cook. And everything I eat gives me bad acid reflux and burning indigestion, plus other issues that send me to the bathroom. And speaking of the bathroom, it hurts to pee, hurts to brush my teeth, hurts to get in and out of the shower, hurts to look at myself in the mirror . . .”
Kendra took a big breath. No one said anything to fill the space.
“My breast . . . ,” Kendra continued. “I don’t talk about that. You can see it’s swollen to a size much bigger than the other, but it’s also hard and uncomfortable, and it hurts. And it’s ugly. And whenever I look at it, I’m reminded that cancer is ravaging”—she closed her eyes, waited—“ravaging my body. I have pain spasms that wake me from sleep. They hurt so bad. Something always hurts. Always.” She showed her discolored fingernails. “I didn’t know fingernails could hurt.”
Molly’s eyes started to fill. She stuck her fingers in their corners.
Kendra shifted positions. “Stiffness,” she said, since she was feeling it. “Much of my upper left side feels stiff at times. And you already know about the constant fatigue and weakness.” She sighed. “The hospital side of things is its own beast”—she lifted her arms from under the covers to show the tracks of bruises, then let her head rest on the pillow propped behind her. “There’s more, but that should give you an idea.”
“Kendra, that was the physical side,” Cyd said. “And as horrible as it is to go through, I can only think that the mental and emotional aspects are just as rough.” Her hand lay still on Kendra’s leg. “Can you tell us about that too?”
Kendra stared at the ceiling. “I can’t even describe that,” she said, letting silence enfold them several minutes more. “If it’s possible, those aspects are even harder. When I got the diagnosis, devastating as it was, I kept thinking, ‘I can get through it with Derek.’ ”
She took a steadying breath. She hadn’t gone back to those emotions in a while. And never had she voiced them.
“He rejected me. He pushed me out into an Arctic blast to fend for myself and shut the door. I’d never felt so alone and scared in my life.” Kendra let the old feeling pass, refusing to cry for him. “Coming back home, being around all of you, it’s been amazing. You’ve been amazing. Cultivating a relationship with God . . . even more amazing. But there’s still mental and emotional grief. You know?”
Her voice broke. “There’s the grief of knowing what you’ll never do or be or have. There’s the grief of feeling completely robbed, like a cruel joke. All the things you grew up looking forward to . . . won’t happen. There’s the grief of watching everyone else live happy, normal lives, and wishing you could have problems like a bad cold or strep throat, like they do.”
She played with the sheet, folding the top of it over her hand, then unfolding. “And there’s the grief of . . . of loving a man like you never thought you could love, and knowing that can’t be either.”
Kendra crumbled. “And you tell me to fight?” She looked at her brother. “Fight to extend the physical, mental, and emotional pain? Why? Don’t we believe things will be better on the other side?”
No one answered.