And the wait begins...again

I am so very tired of having to do this kind of waiting. I thought that 2009 was going to be different. Apparently I thought wrong. I have done this kind of waiting at home, at school, at work, and at the bedside. Strangely, I think I prefer bedside. At least there you can offer some sort of comfort to the people who need it most. Here, there is just the waiting.

My cousin has had two operations in the last year and a half to remove cancerous tumors from his brain. The operations were almost exactly one year apart. After the first one, everything was going great. He only spent three days in the hospital and then was sent home. Chemo and radiation went well. He was hardly sick at all and was in high spirits. He took everything extremely well, especially for being so young.

Then he had a headache and they found another tumor. That was like November last year. Three days in the hospital and he was sent home to recover, again. Again with radiation and chemo, and again, it all went really well. So well in fact that his whole family (his mom, dad, and younger brother and sister) took a relaxing vacation out to Tofino, BC a couple weeks ago. I received pictures of them surfing and hiking and playing in the water. Then he collapsed and went into a coma. He is now semi-conscious in the Palliative Care Unit in the hospital in Tofino.

So again, I wait for a phone call that I know is coming but hope it never does. Every time the phone rings, there is a sick feeling in my stomach. But I still stay up nights listening for fear I will miss it in my sleep. I pray for peace at an end that I wish would never come. I feel hopeless and helpless about a situation no one can do anything about.

I feel empty and exhausted. Again.