CEA

      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?