An Emotional Week...

this has been. Last weekend, I turned 33, and I celebrated with my husband of a year (and 2 months) and some of the best friends a girl could ask for. But there was one friend who was conspicuously absent from my birthday dinner. Stacie, the first friend I'd made in NYC and still my closest, had just learned that the headaches her brother had been complaining of for weeks were the result of an inoperable cancerous tumor that had lodged itself between his skull and his sinus cavity. By the time he was correctly diagnosed, the tumor had grown so large that the neurosurgeons at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center refused to operate for fear the risks far outweighed any potential benefits. Instead, he will begin seven weeks of radiation therapy that, in a best case scenario, will only cost him his vision in one eye. In a worst-case scenario, of course, the radiation regimen will damage his healthy cells but will not kill the cancer cells. We've been told he has a 30-percent chance of survival. This, I told myself and Stacie, is better than a zero percent chance. But it is still a pretty bleak prognosis. Stacie, who is already juggling her responsibilities as a new mother and a full-time pharmaceutical representative, is now trying to squeeze in regular visits with her brother as well.
On the day we'd planned my dinner (which I'd nearly cancelled after hearing the news--it seemed almost frivolous to celebrate my birthday over wine and tapas when a friend of ours was in so much pain), Stacie was shopping for pajama pants and sweatshirts for her brother to make his convalescence more comfortable.
And she still thought to send me a flowering plant the next day (she didn't want to send flowers that could be dead by week's end) with a card apologizing for missing my birthday dinner.
I am blessed to have such friends in my life.
Of course, the same day the plant arrived in my office, Hurricane Katrina landed on the Gulf Coast. We all know now what happened next. Suddenly the pain that Stacie was feeling was multiplied by 1000s. For the next week, I would see images of hurricane refugees crying over lost relatives, pets, homes. I would see images of stranded and starving residents clinging to their roofs and to the narrowing glimmer of hope that they would soon be rescued. I would see images of people who'd survived the hurricane and ensuing floods dying in their lawn chairs from dehydration or starvation because we, as a nation, had failed them.
I sat in my air-conditioned office at work, watching these images on TV from the relative safety of my midtown building, taking reports from our correspondents and interviewing those who'd been there or were on there way. I had never felt so helpless. I watched hurricane refugees pleading for help, for food. "We're dying!" they shrieked at the cameras. And I could do nothing but write about it.
I sat in my office on the phone with Stacie as she gave me the details of her brother's treatment and I could do nothing but listen. I kept asking her, what can I do? But I could not do what she needed most. I could not save her brother. I can only pray that the doctors will.
On Wednesday, my best friend from college, AJ, called me from Orange County, where she had moved four days earlier. And when I asked how she was doing, she burst into tears. She'd been in a car accident that afternoon. Her small convertible car was totaled. All I could think was, she is okay. She is okay. She is calling me so she must be okay. And, relatively speaking, she was. She'd badly strained a muscle in her neck and shoulder and had suffered a concussion. But she was more shaken up than anything. The worst part, she said, was that she had no one to call after the accident. She didn't know anyone but the staff members in her new office, whom she'd met three days earlier. She'd felt so alone, she told me. And my heart ached. I reminded her that I was only a phone call away. But I knew that was little comfort. Even if I'd jumped on a plane, I wouldn't have been there for hours. By then she'd already been to the hospital. It was her office manager who drove her there and then back to the extended stay hotel that is serving as her temporary home.
Finally today I got a call from Denise, a good friend from grad school. She apologized for not calling me on my birthday. But she'd gotten some bad news that day. I braced myself. Another friend of ours from school had lost her father, suddenly, that day after he suffered a stroke and hit his head, causing severe damage to his brain. "Oh God," I said. And the tears started again.
So many people suffered so much this week. And in the end, I can only count my blessings and pray for those who have lost so much this week. I thank my God and my fortune that AJ is alive and will recover. And that Denise and Stacie are strong women who will provide the support that our friend and Stacie's brother will need in the coming weeks and months.
The best gift I received this year for my birthday was the reminder of all the gifts I have already: my friends, my family, my health, my job, and my loving husband.