What’s going on your mind when you hear or read that three
letters? If you’re not a paramedic, you may not think about cancer.
CEA is Carcinoembryonic Antigen. It is a kind of cancer
marker. Some milliliters of human blood are checked in the laboratory and the
result is number range from 0 to 10 something or even more – I don’t know for
sure. But the good result is if the number ranges below 5, some laboratories
even set lower range which is 4,2. This means, if the result is above those
numbers, it concludes that the human who belongs the blood is having a high
risk of cancer or is having a high stadium of cancer.
So there was a paper from laboratory displaying the result
of my mother’s blood just right after I got home. She gave it to me without knowing
any means of every word in it since she is old enough, 61 years old, and I am
having my first semester of bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology. You can guess
my age. Allright, back to the result paper.
It scored 10,44 for
the CEA.
What can I say? It had ever been far lower than that about
six months ago before the surgery of moving out that ‘swollen’ part of large
intestine which is the largest part of the cancer seen by the radiology machine
and the colonoscope. The number was 3,something. Even it scored around 3,
doctor said that she was in the third stadium. And now what crawling in my mind
is, with this high number, what stadium is she right now??
I thought she is okay, thought she is healthy enough,
thought the cancer cells are not developing. That are my hopes. But I’m not
dare to hope.
Cancer. Is something I have never imagined before. Seems so
complicated. So far away. No need to know. Unbelievable, so sudden,
threatening. It develops rapidly as time ticking.
What can I do? What can we do? No permanent home, no
vehicle, no abundant money, no nice daddy supporting the whole family needs. I
can stop my bachelor’s degree for her, I can find a job, remembering that the
only treatment right now, chemotherapy, is a very dear treatment and painful
process. My only sister who is 9 years older than me, stand alone supporting
family and I can’t resist seeing her doing all of this alone.
I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid. Afraid of time, afraid
of losing her, afraid of my future. I only can ask why? And how? What do I have
to do? Meanwhile, time keeps running.
Am I alive? What do I live for?
