Of living and dying: Life is one big ball game
When one is old and enfeebled and hosting a slew of illnesses in the body, the only thing constant in the mind is death.
There is this elbow of a corner in our street where death claims two of three ailing elderlies, wasting away in the grind of time.
The two neighbors succumbed in a span of six months after enduring clutches of pain periodically inflicted on them by killer diseases.
Death comes in the most horrid form, their bodies ravaged by the onslaught of invading cells that led to their “functional impairments.”
Everybody has some sort of phantom pain, an old psychological scar, and fear of the unknown, as death lurks in the dark with its pall of gloom and doom.
But mine is a complicated one, with a physical makeup burdened with grave maladies that have feasted on my body fiber after fiber, and literally drained it of energy and spirit—and a wavering will to live or move on.
It’s not unlike taking and acquiescing to the dictates of fate and the test of faith.
My old, tired, and weary self had long resigned to this inequity as I labored through the vicious siege of prostate cancer, COVID-19, and Parkinson’s disease.
“You’re a tough nut to crack,” said a daughter in jest as we checked out of the hospital that had become a second home.
With all the costly medications that have taken their toll on the family coffers for temporary relief of the tremors, spasms, rigidity, depression and Dyskinesia, among others, I could only take it lightly, lean back, suck it all in, and say I was virtually a portable walking “hospital ward.”
Two life-threatening ailments and a no-cure disease have virtually made me a receptacle of malignant cells, a deadly coronavirus that swept through the rest of the world and a progressive, retrogressive muscle disorder.
And it’s so unfair that I have been given no choice but to lump all three together—vicious, relentless, malevolent—that would decimate my body and instill a sense of mortality.
Life, indeed, is a constant struggle, and all my life I’ve seen these struggles in many forms. But none could be as demanding, demeaning, and destructive: a “malady of the soul.”
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system caused by the death of dopaminergic cells in the ventral region of the brain, according to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation.
The subsequent lack of dopamine causes movement-related disorders, including postural instability.
There are around 120,000 PD cases in the Philippines, including an endemically afflicted community reportedly in Panay. There are over six million cases all over the world.
For 15 years, I have endured the inroads of Parkinson’s, slowing me down and seizing control of my entire being. It completely overhauled my body so that there are times when I couldn’t take a single step, my leg muscles would “freeze,” rendering me a hobbling and furious old man.
After numerous brushes with mortality, I fear death no more. I have soldiered on after the vicious siege of prostate cancer, COVID-19 and Parkinson’s disease.
It has evicted me from my real life, eroded my self-esteem, and alienated friends and kin. As if I had shed my true self and become a stranger to everybody.
Despite the medications, deep brain surgery, continuing research, and some breakthroughs, Parkinson’s remains an enigma with no cure in sight, taking away the quality and dignity of one’s life.
But I soldiered on, keeping faith in myself and drawing courage and strength from the care and love of those close to me.
As a famous American cardiologist afflicted with Parkinson’s once wrote: “Serious illness is a struggle on many levels, but it is, in no small measure, a search for hope and courage, hope that things will get better and the courage to move forward even if they don’t.”
When I felt I had slowed down Parkinson’s full onset with vigorous exercise and workouts and yearned for a break in this continuing bout with the disease—I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer of the prostate gland, and it further compounded my dilemma.
That touched off a virtual escape act that would entail 42 sessions of aggressive radiation treatment two times a week in a reputable hospital to arrest its unwanted growth.
Although my body responded well to the treatment, I remain wary of its remission as we plod on to put our life back on track.
The residue of the Big C remains in the mind together with the insidious presence of Parkinson’s disease.
But just when we thought we had had our share of these maladies, COVID-19 swept through the populace and, in its biggest surge in July of 2021, I caught it with all of its deadly cells replicating a thousandfold and assuming its part to feed on me in the ensuing pandemic.
For 12 days, I was confined in a crowded ICU of a nearby hospital where death manifested itself in various forms.
There were shuffles of feet and a rushed removal of a patient who had just expired. Other times, a low moan laced with torment would break the silence of the night. Or the labored breathing of a person about to succumb in the next room.
And pain. Excruciating pain.
These are the lasting imprints left me after 12 days as I struggled with COVID-19, merciless and unrelenting, which hastened the onset of my Parkinson’s.
Long hours languishing in my hospital bed had left me virtually crippled with leg muscles “atrophied” and unresponsive.
There would be massive spasms keeping me up all night, “freezing” of the muscles, and involuntary leg movement that would tear my lower parts as if the knee bones were about to pop up and break through the flesh.
The pain was so intense and severe, there were days I would wake up gripping my hamstring, and it would happen sometimes three times a day, with pain relievers barely able to cope with the onslaught. COVID-19 sent me to a wheelchair for months and left me with a limp that I have to deal with by carrying a walking stick.
Eventually, it would ease up as if spent from its vicious siege and my body; after two sessions of hemoperfusion, I began to heal and mend.
That was one descent into the pit of hell, and I felt I was scarred for whatever was left in me.
Ironically, in the clutch of severe pain and anguish that had tormented my body, I somehow felt the presence of God, and it gave me a new perspective anchored on faith to pick up the pieces.
After numerous brushes with mortality, I fear death no more. He has become a buddy by my side every day.
As an Irish Jesuit priest would say: “We are born to die… and death is the most everyday of everyday things.”
Death could also be a gift for the living. It would unburden them of the suffering unfairly imposed on them.
And I would not wish for it, but when it comes, I would wait for that moment when I would be released from my corporeal body to rest forever.
