Life finds its way between chemo sessions
While doxorubicin runs through my veins, killing cells at will, a new life is brewing inside me.
BarcelonaGently, the nurse takes his arm and injects the IV, which in the coming hours will be the gateway for chemicals that until recently were unknown to me: rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin. In recent days, clumps of hair have fallen relentlessly, leaving the shower tray saddened by a wavy farewell to a youth now at a standstill. And yet, many still resist the onslaught, hiding behind a cap that will be their new companion in the coming months.
Around us, some faces are already familiar. The woman looking at her cell phone while eating chocolate bars; the old man waiting resignedly to go home, as if he were waiting for a bus; the elegant gentleman reading Schopenhauer with his legs comfortably reclined. There's room for everyone here. No one is safe from the overwhelming diagnoses, nor from the routine tests that change your course of action in a split second.
The spacious armchairs line the windows, overlooking the city's hills. Through the glass, clusters of houses where people continue their lives, oblivious to those of us waiting inside. It's not that they want to see us. We are, in short, proof—the uncomfortable reminder—that life doesn't always go as planned. That long-term plans are often nothing more than a dead letter.
Luminous Life
On the horizon, high in the sky, airplanes fly toward distant destinations under the midsummer sun. Their outline is a sweet promise, a memory of past adventures I once experienced, when summers were a carefree succession of controlled adventures. Days when nothing suggested my future could be anything but brighter.
And yet, even though time has stopped and the months are now divided into treatment sessions, life has become brighter than ever. As the doxorubicin courses through her veins, killing cells at will, a new life is brewing inside me. A miracle. A tiny being conceived between us, at the last minute. Proof that everything can begin, even when it seems everything is ending. A sign that, nevertheless, nothing ever stops.
Sitting next to her, passing the hours together in this aseptic hospital room, we look at each other and know that after this small stumble, this forced pause, she will be born and bring us back to life. A gift that comes to remind us that the world goes on and that we will have a place again.