Pregnant Belly

7-16-08 – Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Yesterday arrived a mother with a family, complete with an entire life outside of these hospital walls. However, while she was here her heart stopped beating. But we brought it back. We saved her life. My own hands pushed in on her chest, pushed blood through her heart, pushed life through her veins. For twenty-four hours I watched a miracle evolve, but on the twenty-fourth it failed. The miracle stopped breathing when she was declared to have irrecoverable brain damage and she went home to die with her family. Her life was short but full; there were fifteen people in the hall waiting to take her home when the last tube was pulled.

But this new patient didn’t even have that - didn’t have the years to have that – didn’t have the time to make her mark or fall in love because she looked eight months pregnant, but with an ovarian cancer. It is a sneaky illness from a diagnostic standpoint because it remains indistinctive during the window of possible intervention, and by the time a diagnosis is made the cancer has usually metastasized to the point where nothing can be done. But you wouldn’t expect it in a girl so young. She is 13 and will be lucky to see 14. Child-bearing age is 12-50. This is the only abdominal swelling she will ever know.

Would it be a blessing or a curse to wake up every morning truly feeling lucky to be alive? Imagine what that would be like. Now imagine what it would be like at 13.