Panacea

I have always liked hospitals when I was a kid, I loved to wait there until the doctor was ready for me. He made me feel better and always gave me a lollipop. I have always had a pleasant experience at hospitals, but that changed when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. My mom was a very lovable woman, there was no one that could say anything against her, but now I hate waiting and the hopelessness I feel. No matter how many experimental treatments she went through, the doctor says that there is nothing more they can do. Today we are taking her to her house, so she can die there as she requested.

My mom spent most of her life at her garden, so we prepared her a room with a window to the garden. As we laid her in her bed, she smiled, even though she was in pain, even when the cancer has taken one kidney and the other is getting worse and she still smiles. She was always looking at her garden and breathing saying "there is no smell better than nature" then she smiled again, she always loved to look at the tree in the center of her garden, which I never knew what kind of tree it was. The doctor only gave her two weeks to live and I didn't leave her side. I decided that I was going to spend the rest of her days with her.

I didn't know if I was getting used to seeing her like that, but after a week she seemed to be getting better, she even sat on the bed by herself. One day I was feeding her and she took the plate and the spoon and started eating by herself. To my surprise two weeks later she tried to stand by herself, but I stopped her. I suggested her that we went to her doctor to check what was happening. But she refused, saying that hospitals would only made her worse. I called the family, and they came to visit, they all were so happy that she was doing so good. Then my brother noticed that I was not limping, I had an accident a year ago and I lost most of my left leg movement. I didn’t even notice I wasn’t limping, all this work taking care of mom distracted me from that.

When they were leaving, they told me that if she is improving, I should take her to the doctor to make some tests. I told them I would, and they left.

It was Friday so I decided to spend the weekend relaxed and take mom to the doctor on Monday. We had the most productive weekend, she started walking again and took me to the garden and taught me how to talk to plants. She is really funny, I missed that about her. On Monday I told her that were going to the hospital, but she refused, she said that nature was the one helping her, not the doctors. I was not going to force her, but I told her that I was going to ask the doctor to come here. She did not answer.

The doctor arrived on Wednesday and checked her, she wasn’t happy, but on the other hand, the doctor couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A woman that was sent home to die from terminal cancer, looked and acted like a healthy adult. He told us that he needed her to go to the hospital and perform some tests and left. I talked to her and she said that she would happily go the next Wednesday, I accepted.

There was one thing that I was also starting to notice, besides my limping, I always got tired easily and now I was able to do a lot of things, without even breathing hard. Maybe nature is taking care of us. Family visited again on Saturday and most of them stayed until Sunday, it was very nice. Everyone was so happy to see mom like that again. On Sunday morning everyone said that they felt younger, revitalized. Mom said that it was nature taking care of us, and that soon nature will take care of everyone. No more disease, illness or death. We laughed nervously, not knowing if she was joking or not.

On Tuesday I called the doctor to confirm the Wednesday appointment. After the call, my sister called me and told me that her son left his inhaler at mom’s. I told her I would look for it, but she told me that it was weird, he needed to use that every day, but he didn’t know where it was since Saturday. She was also taking him to the doctor to see if his asthma was gone.

Mom told me to take her out before going to the appointment. So, I did, the appointment was at 4pm so we went shopping, we went to eat, to the park and even went to the movies. She said she missed those things. When we arrived at the hospital, they quickly took her in and started making all sort of tests. I was so worried, I knew she hated that, but she was so relaxed, she was even smiling. The doctor told me that as soon as they have the results, they will call us.

When we were on our way back, I rolled down the car windows and started smelling the fresh air. Mom said that she wanted to tell me that, because she loved the country air. When we arrived at home, we fell asleep fast, we were tired. I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing the next morning. It was the doctor, he said that mom was infected with something, but they couldn’t figure out what it was. He sounded desperate, he asked what kind of plants we had at home and wanted us to go back to the hospital as soon as possible.

I was scared and I went looking for mom, she was at the living room watching TV. The news were on and there was a sudden chaos, when people started leaving the hospitals, assuring they were fine. I told mom that we needed to go to back to the hospital and she replied that hospitals were not needed anymore. She said;

“Nature will take care of us.”

There was no way we were going to make it to the hospital with all the chaos. So, I called the doctor and explained that to him and asked him what can I do to treat my mothers infection. But he said that the infection is not a bad one, he told me that her kidneys grew back when a spore from a plant merged with her cell, and the spore replicated the cell, half plant half human. He also said that it looked like she was exhaling those spores in the hospitals, and many patients also have got cured from every disease they had. I hanged up and started watching the news with my mom until we fell asleep. After a couple of months, the world was being infected with the spores, it was like a pandemic, but this time it cured us instead of killing us. In a year, the whole world was infected.

Not everything was fine, it also caused many problems in the world, hospitals were closing, pharmaceuticals around the world were closing also, millions of people used to die of diseases weekly, so overpopulation was another issue. But nature also had an answer for that.

This is my last entry as I will close this notebook and hold my mother’s had to become one with nature. We are sitting in a bench beside her favorite tree and our feet are anchored to the ground. They are literally roots, and our bodies are little by little becoming a tree. There is no pain, there is an overwhelming peace. To whoever read this, Nature took care of us and took care of our planet.