happiness...inner peace...are you out there ???

I feel exhausted. Last night I kept tossing and turning until about 3am. I talked with my mom long distance, and both of us were crying on the phone. My 9-year old niece Annika has been fighting cancer for more than a year. We initially found out she had it mid-2005, and right away they pulled her from school and started treatment. She had osteosarcoma, a common bone cancer in kids, and her right upper arm bone was infected. She had 10 rounds of chemo, and a major operation on her arm and leg. They took out the bone that was infected and replaced it with her leg bone, a bone that only athletes used. That year was really hard as she was in and out of hospitals, and when she was not in the hospital, she had to be quarantined to the house to avoid infections. There were a couple of times when they had to rush her to the hospital cos she did catch infections and such. She also lost her hair, lost weight and had the normal side effects of chemo such as nausea and abdominal pains.

Her last round of chemo was late last year. And since then, she's been back to school. She's also gained weight, been eating a lot, super energetic, and she's pretty happy. She keeps saying: I don't have cancer anymore! She has friends in school, both ICA and Xavier has actually been really good to them. Both Annika and her older brother Tymon have full scholarships until they graduate high school. The free tuition is really good right now esp. since our family has been financially struggling with the massive hospital bills.

But now her chest scan shows tiny black spots in both lungs. They are too tiny for a biopsy tho. Her doctors have different opinions. Some of them think they should just wait to see if they get bigger. Some think they should be more aggressive, they say that her cancer is so strong that in less than 2 months after her last round of chemo, it has already metastasized to her lungs. They gave the option to do a major surgery, to cut her chest open and take out a big chunk of her left and right lungs. But after much tears, lots of talks and lots of prayers, they've decided not to go through with the surgery. It's a big deal to be cutting into her lungs, she's so young, who knows what will happen with her missing part of her lungs? Even my dad advised against it. And even if they did it and found out it was lung cancer, that just means more chemo. And this time the chemo will have to be twice as strong, with twice as many painful side effects. They don't want her to suffer anymore. She's happy now, with going to school and seeing her friends.
It's just unbearable to pull her out of school again and subject her to isolation in the hospital again.

The silver lining in all of this is now I'll get to see them again soon, my brother Boy, Annie, Tymon and Annika. My sisters all decided to get together and chip in and make sure Annika is as happy as she can be. Her happy memory before she got sick was being on vacation in Canada, when our whole family had a reunion, all 19 of us then. Since then Annika has kept asking if she can come back. It'll be pretty easy to arrange as they all still have their visas. So now they're fixing their schedules, etc. The kids will just have to be pulled from school. Hopefully they make it here in June, when my oldest sister and her family are also visiting from LA. It'll be nice if they spend 2 months here, June and July, the nicest time in the summer. We'll go camping and other outdoor stuff. We can't really wait that long, we have to move fast, as we don't know and have no control of what's gonna happen to her next. Too bad we can't also pull Matthew and Nicole from school, and have William and Diane join us too, so it'll really be a reunion. But Diane just got a huge contract providing 24/hr food service to a major call center, so they're super busy right now and can't get away. Since our last reunion, there's been 2 additions to the family. My husband Dave, and my sister Helen's baby girl Kiana.

So I'm really looking forward to seeing them. I'm so thankful that I have such an awesome family, and we really come together to help each other when times are rough. Living here for 5 years, I've seen so many families that just don't have the values Asian families have. They put their careers ahead of them, and don't even bother to try to get to know their kids. They don't even have meals together, they try to move as far away from each other as possible, and put up with having to see each other once a year, just on the holidays. I'm so happy I was born into my family, and we're as close as we are now. I was looking at pics of our reunion, and here are some nice pictures of Annika.