Photo by Mabel Amber on Pixabay
I cleaned up my daughter’s remaining stuff today, which were haphazardly stored in a room. As I was sorting through her toys, I got hold of an unwrapped gift. I gave a loud shriek and started crying.
Last March 2017, my daughter Anya, who was just turning four years old, was rushed to the emergency room for high fever and stomach ache. The resident doctor asked to speak to me and my husband. He said that they suspected Anya to have leukemia because her white blood count and platelet count were unusually high.
We got to know more about this blood and bone cancer called leukemia when Anya’s doctors explained the disease. The first doctor told us that if we had a choice between two types of leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML), we should go for ALL because it has a higher chance of survival. Unfortunately, Anya had AML. We consulted with three doctors, and the third one said that AML had eight classifications: M0 – M7. He told us that we had better hope it was from M0-M2. Initial findings said Anya had M7, the worst classification – or so we thought. But upon further examination, the doctors found that Anya had M5, which was even worse.
The way my family and I survived this ordeal is supernatural and beyond human limits. I always say that I could not have survived and would much rather be dead than have to see my baby suffer from the cruelty of this disease. But God held our hands from the sight of my precious baby crying from the pain of wounds that never healed, and in the times we could not get her to eat and saw her turn into skin and bones. With every labored breath that she took, we just moved on with God in our midst. The only thing we could do to ease even just a bit of her pain was to reinforce her strong pain medicines with massages and momentary distractions. Anya and our family never failed to call upon the Lord. The final act of love we did for Anya was praying to God to take pity on her and end her suffering, which He mercifully granted on August 14, 2017. If enduring and coming out of that experience was not supernatural, then I do not know what is. Only God could have given us the strength to surpass the death of our child and come out even stronger in faith and full of peace and joy.
More than a year since Anya’s death, I am reminded of the time I was struggling to feed her. My aunt visited Anya and gave her two nicely wrapped gifts. I told Anya that she could only open one and may only open the second gift if she would eat something. She never got to open the second gift. This pains me to this day.
Our story is sad, but I gained special lessons that are worth sharing from what I consider to be the most trying season of my life.
Take care of yourself. I was pregnant in the five months that Anya battled with cancer, and so I strove to eat and sleep on time. But there was a time I cried so much that I was downed by a severe throat infection for an entire week. This did nothing to help the situation. I learned that it’s wise to take care of myself so that I can be a more reliable caregiver.
Ask for help and be kind. My husband discovered that I had a superhero complex: I wanted to do everything for my baby girl without recognizing my limitations. I thought nobody could do it better than me; after all, I am the mother. But whenever frustrations and disappointments set in, I turned into this rude, unreasonable monster. I never realized this until I made Anya cry because she refused to follow my instruction. I repented and became more open to asking for help and being kind to people who support us – from her doctors, nurses, and other caregivers, to visiting relatives and friends.
Cry, but remember to smile. Anya was too young to understand the seriousness of the situation. We praise God that we always found reasons to smile and even laugh despite our heavy hearts. I believe prayers from families, friends and even strangers strongly brought encouragement to our family. Seeing Anya smile beautifully even up to the last hours of her life was nothing short of a miracle.
Pray also for others. Many of our prayer requests were turned down, but God impressed upon my heart the truth that there were many more blessings being poured out. It helped that our church diligently sent out prayer requests to the congregation so that we could pray for one another. Keeping tabs of these blessings filled my heart with gratitude to God so that I did not feel bitter.
Surrender all your worries to God. I confess that I did a lot of panicking and worrying that time, but I quickly discovered that these unhealthy habits were never helpful. One of the big challenges we met was the enormous amount of money needed to treat my baby. My husband once struggled on deciding whether or not to help a terminally sick friend in need of PhP 10,000. He took a leap of faith and gave the money even though we were also due to pay an incoming hospital bill. An hour later, Anya’s doctor knocked on our door with a messenger, tasked to deliver PhP 300,000 in cold cash – a donation made by a generous lady we barely knew, whom God used as a channel of blessing.
The day after I buried my daughter, I gave birth to Jax Alenna; another baby girl and an additional testament to God’s unending love and faithfulness to our family.
If you are among those undergoing trials, I encourage you to turn to Jesus Christ because He was, is, and always will be the only One who can fill our hearts with peace and joy.
Joyce Mendoza, a night owl turned to a morning person, is wife to Attorney Desi Karlo Mendoza and mommy to Miguel, Anya(+) and Jax. Her family worships at GCF North and aspires to contribute to sharing the saving grace of Jesus Christ to all nations. She works at Ajinomoto Philippines Corporation as a Public Relations Manager.
