subarachnoid hemorrhage

Last night, I took out the pouch, my dad had prepared before I left for Japan, containing a rosary and a mantra booklet, sat cross-legged facing east, and began to chant.

Earlier, I was on YM with my sister discussing how to best help my aunt who is now in ICU, intubated in every possible way to help her stay alive. Last week, she was admitted to the hospital for subarachnoid hemorrhage due to a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. It snapped while she was in the bathroom. Subarachnoid hemorrhage is a grisly condition with high mortality. Some died before arriving at the hospital. Looking back, that was perhaps how her dad and brother died many, many years ago, a time when most of us were still ignorant about medical conditions.

After three emergency operations to relieve the pressure ratcheting up inside her head from the pooled blood, she lapsed into a coma. Her pupils were no longer responding. She had infection. She had fever. And her vital signs roller-coastered. Yesterday afternoon, the doctor gathered everyone and mentally prepped the family for the worst -- even if she'd made it through, it is very likely that she would be vegetative for the rest of her life.

My sister asked me if the doctors were going to remove all the tubes when they said they were "giving up". I have no idea. I only knew, at that moment, that my sister and I weren't ready to give up. And so, we decided to pray.

Five minutes into my monotonous recital last night, however, I couldn't help but wondered: What was is it that I was praying for? Was I praying for a medical miracle? For her to wake up and recovered as if the aneurysm had not touched her at all? Or was I praying for her soul? For a smooth transition from one phase of life that we all know into one which is obscure to all? Or was it my own unwillingness to face up to the reality that I was really praying for, my own clinging? A couple of nights ago, I dreamed of her and she was radiant, calm and smiling in it. They told me, like her bleak prognosis, it was a bad sign.

My sister said she is praying so that my aunt would regain her consciousness again, even if ephemerally, to say her last words. A concept I couldn't quite know how to apply to my aunt who perhaps belongs to a generation of oriental women living through life behind an invisible niqab.