Kei
M emailed me and said that Kei passed away at 12am Cape Town time. She was admitted to the hospital July 20th for what we thought was persistent pneumonia. They decided to do a CT scan as they thought it was potentially a blood clot in the lung. The CT revealed a large mass in one of her lungs in addition to the pnemonia and multiple lesions on her lymph nodes. She also had a lump on her very upper leg, which they did a biopsy on.
On July 26th, we got the results that it was stage 4 lung cancer. This was her worst nightmare come to life. I got to talk to her in the middle of the night for a couple of hours on July 29th.
She did five days of radiation in the hopes of shrinking the mass enough for her to be able to mechanically breathe better - this was keeping her on oxygen. The hope was that she would recover from the radiation at home and have a chance to get strong for chemotherapy, though at stage 4 the discussion was about trying to buy time more than cure it.
I was sitting in the passport agency office when M emailed me and told they were trying to get palliative care cover in place so Kei could go home in the end. I was so lost at that point - there was nothing I could do at that point to get to Cape Town any faster.
I know she didn't want to battle cancer again, I know that the last months would have been very, very difficult for her.
I am just - devastated. I do not have words for how devastated I am for her family and for the fact that I am never going to be able to talk to her again or hold her hand - I so desperately wanted to hold her hand.
I did not get to say goodbye.