{"id":5158,"date":"2020-11-12T11:41:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T17:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=5158"},"modified":"2020-11-12T11:44:33","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T17:44:33","slug":"the-telling-name-on-covid-quarantine-and-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=5158","title":{"rendered":"The Telling Name: On Covid, Quarantine, and Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019ve been reading long-ago letters from my family\u2019s dead. I delight in their terms of endearment, trace the gestures of their handwriting, and sway to the rhythms of their old village dialects. Visiting with my ghosts helps me step out of time and away from the pandemic, at least for a while. Call it a coping mechanism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe tumor has come through the skin now,\u201d the cancer specialist he told me by phone from Toronto. He called this morning, as promised. \u201cIt\u2019s time for the mastectomy,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the days before the virus outbreak had begun in earnest, the doctor and I had weighed the costs and benefits of surgery: my mother is elderly, paralyzed after decades of degenerative illness, and has already beaten cancer once. Given her age and frailty, we decided to put it off for as long as possible. Chemo and radiation would be out of the question in her case. \u201cWhat\u2019s more, given her state, she might never come off a respirator,\u201d the doctor said quietly. <\/span><\/p>\n

A mere week after this conversation, the virus began its tear through the care facility that has served as my mother\u2019s home for over a decade. It came suddenly and strong. Before long, the Covid had caught my mother. I walked around for days in a fog of tears and anticipatory grief, reeling between the two diagnoses \u2013 cancer and Covid, Covid and cancer \u2013 both apparent death sentences. \u201cSave your mourning until you need it,\u201d my husband said gently. \u201cShe\u2019s alive now.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Against all odds, my mother has come through the infection. It lasted around 8 weeks. Even her nurse called it a miracle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The home sends a virus update by email each day. Every morning with my coffee I open the file and study the columns: \u201cPositive,\u201d \u201cNegative,\u201d \u201cDeaths,\u201d \u201cResolved.\u201d Today, as I read, I do a quick tally. The virus has now killed 37 people in the building. 80 active cases of Covid-19 remain. Last week, the total of in the \u201cResolved\u201d column went up by one, that is, by my mother\u2019s survival. Call it a reprieve.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cancer specialist\u2019s Ethiopian name, I\u2019ve surmised, means \u201cServant of Christ.\u201d Even being as bad a Catholic as I am, I nevertheless find comfort in this \u201ctelling name\u201d (sprechender Name<\/em>), so apt for a doctor brimming with compassion and shimmering intelligence. When I filled him in on my mother\u2019s infection, recovery, and the home\u2019s continued lockdown, he changed his plan for surgery. \u201cThe virus is unpredictable,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what damage it has done to your mother\u2019s lungs. We don\u2019t know if she can be re-infected.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

So, again, we wait. We wait for the virus to finish its rampage. For my mother\u2019s body to strengthen itself. To see if it will prove its immunity.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the call, I put the family letters away. The virus has pulled me back into time. I feel the march of every minute as I calculate how long will need to travel and self-quarantine to be at my mother\u2019s side, should the mastectomy become her ferry to the ghosts. <\/span><\/p>\n

[Photo: Sebastian Gurd]<\/a><\/p>\n

This micro-essay originally appeared at How We Are: Writers and Artists Under Quarantine<\/em> (June 2, 2020).<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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