However, experiences such as this do not come easy or free. Being a Peace Corps volunteer is difficult. You are thrown into a culture that is completely different from your own, in a climate that your body will probably try to reject, away from most things and people you know and love. You miss your friends and family, American food, electricity, easily accessible clean water… the list goes on and on and on. Volunteers have to deal with all of these difficulties and I am no exception.
One difficulty that I did not list above, but have recently had to deal with, is what happens when you have a family crisis? What do you do when something goes wrong with the people you care about most, and you and thousands of miles away? This is pretty much every volunteers worst nightmare. It is something that we all know can happen over the course of two years, but you just hope and pray that it does not happen to you or your family. Unfortunately this is exactly what happened to me and my family only a few weeks ago.
On December 9th my mother went to the hospital because of her persistent neck, shoulder and back pain and on the 14th she was diagnosed with Stage IV Lung cancer. Specifically, she has a type of non small cell lung cancer called Adenocarcinoma, and the cancer has metastasized to several areas of her skeletal system and her brain. She started radiation treatment on December 30th and will start chemotherapy shortly after her radiation treatments are completed next week. The doctors are very hopeful that she will respond well to both the radiation and the chemo, but we will have to wait for at least a month before the results are tested.
She was very upset at the original diagnosis (of course), but is feeling better now that she is receiving treatment. Waiting to do something was probably the worst part for her. The radiation also seems to be helping reduce her neck and back pain slightly and that makes her quite happy, and hopeful. Thus far she has not been sick from the radiation treatments and is not expected to get sick from the chemo either. She is feeling a little fatigued, but for her it has been manageable. Also, all of her friends, family and co-workers have been extremely supportive and I think this has had a large impact.
The worst week and a half I have spent in The Gambia was after her diagnosis and before I flew back to America. Trying to decide when to come back, and finding the an affordable way to travel from Africa to America with only a few days notice, is not anywhere close to my definition of fun. In the end it worked out and I have been in America since December 21st.
Now the big decision is "What is next?"… I am scheduled to return to The Gambia on January 14th, and the new academic semester starts shortly thereafter. I am still planning to take that flight back, but I don’t know what will happen in the long run. We are in another waiting period before we know how she is reacting to the treatment and I have commitments, and a lot left to learn, in The Gambia. I also have a year and a half left in my service and that seems like so much longer than it used to.
I am writing this blog for several reasons. First is to let people know what is going on with my mother. Second is to let friends and family know what is happening with my situation and my Peace Corps service. And lastly I am writing this to offer an additional perspective on the Peace Corps experience for current and prospective Peace Corps volunteers. My intention is not to deter future volunteers, or to scare current volunteers, but instead to possibly give additional consideration to situations such as mine, and to offer some small sort of support.
Situations like this, and worse, have happened to past volunteers and will happen to other volunteers in the future. Sadly it is inevitable. It is not something that we can change, but it is something we can handle. The hardest question is how do you handle it and, like I said before, what do you do next? For now I do not have the answer to these questions, but I’ll try to keep you posted…
