responsibilities

Friday, February 01, 2008 T: 00 18

What if you are a parent finding yourself with a daughter born with leukemia and the only solution offered to you is to have another child in order to order his bone marrow?

What if you are that child who feels that the reason for your existence only just lies with your sister?

What if you are the sick girl who have been through all that years of medical treatment consisting of lots of needles and pain, years of knowing the amount of physical pain you have caused your sister to suffer, and now require a kidney from her?

And if you are the parent, would you encourage the transplant knowing that the success rate isn’t 100%?

In My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Piccoult asks such questions, and offers a few perspectives to look at this issue. As I thought through them, I realize I’m really unable to answer, perhaps even rather to toss a coin to decide. Then again, would I even allow a coin toss to decide the fate of the people I love? There are no right and wrong. I wish there is, so that the world can be more certain, definite. There seem to be so many grey areas I find myself stumbling into as I grow up, along with all those tremendously difficult decisions I may have to make, answers to give. But maybe that’s what makes life more interesting. But this is the unexpected which I rather do without.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I wonder how many people in this world have failed to plan. Who has consider the work as a garbage collector in his plan? Who has considered the birth of a dying child in his family planning? Maybe if you tried to plan too much, accommodating to too many possible scenarios, you may ending up with nothing at all.

A while ago, there was an article about how an African couple seek treatment for their child who is born with very severe deformities (such as the lack of 4 limbs) so that the child might live longer. In it, I see nothing but pointlessness, if not cruelty. Why do you even want a child in this condition to live, only to be ostracized and shunned by society? At best, he can be fitted with robotic artificial limbs only to be some exhibition to show success in the medical field! Perhaps the responsibilities of parents involves not just ensuring the child’s survival, rather I think it includes learning to let go, to sometimes do what is needed to minimize the pain and suffering. Would you then abort a child born with an additional chromosome – Down’s syndrome? When I asked a friend, I got a very certain affirmative for an answer. But I can’t help but feel that the decision would be much harder after seven months of pregnancy, excited and ecstatic anticipation? After all, could we bear to live with self-reproach for the rest of our lives, attempting to convince ourselves that our decision is a right one?

Would you pull the plug of a close person after 1 year of coma or continue to bear the financial burden for the rest of your life? Would you agree to DNR after suffering on the hospital bed for weeks?

These are questions we don’t really ask. They do not exactly encourage us, but rather causes us to live more in apprehension if we become overly concerned about them. We all hope for the best, pray that we won’t be put in such positions.

When I was young, my world was made up of the black and white. Now the grey areas seem to be spreading faster than ever. Decisions which I would never hesitate making in the past are decisions which I would not spend hours pondering over and not come to an answer. For the bold and the optimistic, they choose to move on in search of a greater happiness they think would come to them. For me, I think I’m a coward.