Extension

It has been a good two months since I joked about my sick friend having her treatment extension, so we would finish treatment together in 2013. 

I am remorseful over the fact that two months ago would have been her last through hell, but it was not. She had made it through 19 months of religious antibiotics, enduring the commute from Antipolo to E Rodriguez, and groggily returning home, drugged and with in-between vomits. She obediently accomplished what most patients hardly considered--a perfect streak of attendance. 

But despite this, she still had to extend her treatment, with that questionable damage bored through her lungs. An operation would have been feasible, but the trusted doctor recommended an extension of treatment. 

Now, her end of treatment screams "uncertain"--with her perfect streak scratched four times by despair and deferred hope. Unrewarded obedience for 19 months is of course frustrating, torturous and debilitating. Rebellion would be predictable for such disheartenment.

I can only reprimand her so much, but the doctors have warned me to stay away from the patients; or I can get infected in the lungs, and my treatment would be extended as well.

My friend must have a harder time than I--she has to accept the fact that her certainty became an uncertainty. I can only pray for life.