by Nina Redl
Nina Redl is a health care chaplain who has worked for many years with oncology patients. She tells the story of Natasha, a young woman with Inflammatory Breast Cancer she met when she was working in the Middle East.
I met Natasha towards the end of her life. A Russian Jewish immigrant to Israel, she had taken a very unusual road. Instead of settling in a Russian Jewish neighborhood in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, she moved to Eilat and lived in a part-Bedouin, part-Arab neighborhood. Working in one of the big hotels she felt connected to her Arab coworkers. They “adopted” her as “another daughter.” Natasha learned their language, culture and customs, and within a short time converted to Islam. Within a two-year time span she married Ali, one of the cooks at her workplace, and they started a family. Natasha had three sons before she and Ali moved to East Jerusalem to be closer to his family.
During their first winter in Jerusalem Natasha fell ill a lot, surprisingly so for a strong young woman who grew up in Russia and was “used to cold temperatures.” But when summer came, she increasingly felt weaker. Neither she nor Ali could afford a doctor. As a poor Arab family, they had no easy access to the Israeli (primarily Jewish) government subsidized health system. In the small, local clinics that saw her for free, she was diagnosed with chronic exhaustion, was told to rest and avoid another pregnancy. The Bedouin healers they saw thought she may have suffered from an illness of the heart. Given that Natasha had given up her Judaism for Ali and her family, her illness, they said, may stem from unresolved grief that Natasha and her ancestors were feeling in their souls.
Despite her new life, Natasha did miss her birth family, religion and country of origin. Hoping that having another child would heal some of her grief, pain and fatigue, she became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. Natasha got scared when was unable to breast feed due to pain, lack of breast milk, and exhaustion that barely allowed her any normal activity.
Using up her last savings, Natasha paid for a doctor’s visit in one of the larger Arab hospitals where she was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer (i.e., a rare type of breast cancer that develops rapidly, making the affected breast red, swollen, and tender). Already “locally advanced,”meaning the cancer has spread from point of origin to nearby tissue and possibly lymph nodes, Natasha’s cancer had also spread to her lungs. The hospital gave Natasha treatment pro bono since she was so young, and had no funds.
After several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, it became clear that Natasha’s illness was terminal. A last, desperate attempt at radiation treatment left her with severe burns that turned her entire chest into a partially scarred, infected and tumorous wound. Any contact caused pain. The wound grew and festered along with her cancer.
When Natasha and I met, she was an inpatient in a small hospital and hospice in East Jerusalem that took her in due to her family’s inability to care for her sufficiently at home. I served as a volunteer chaplain and nurse in that hospital. Shy at first, Natasha refused to let anyone see her wound or touch her. Afraid that the smell of the wound would drive someone away, she lay in bed facing the wall, hugging the bed linens tightly around herself, pretending to sleep, so as not to encourage anyone to come close.
The wounds on Natasha’s chest were so severe and prone to infection that she was bedridden, unable to dress or do much else without intensive pain medication. Many people, including her family, stopped visiting. The image of Natasha “dying from the inside out” was too terrible to witness. Natasha never encouraged them to come either. Her fear of being a burden and a failure ran deep. But for her, it was not the wound or the cancer that ate her up; it was the loneliness, sadness and grief. Natasha told me at one point that the wound was nothing but a physical representation of how she felt, having lost her family not once, but twice. The illness meant loss of family, much worse than any physical ailment.
During her first few days in the hospital, I just sat next to Natasha’s bed. I brought her food and helped her to the bathroom. Despite dying of cancer, she was a beautiful and lively young woman. I wanted her to know that even though her cancer was visible, she was so much more than her cancer. Hence in this beginning stage, my only goal was to help soothe the emotional pain she suffered.
When we talked we spoke about many things unrelated to Natasha’s illness, as little by little she started opening up to me. In the long hours we spent together she told me about her dreams, her hopes for a better life “the next time around,” feeling that she would die the moment she lost her hair, her struggle to come to terms with the fact that not only would she never see her children grow up, she would barely get to see them before she died.
Natasha said she wanted to be remembered as a strong, beautiful woman and mother who loved her children and her husband. She hoped that leaving her country to start a new life on her own would not be viewed as selfishness, but as strong, courageous determination to create a better future for herself. She grappled with, in her view, how God, society and her family abandoned her during her illness and how in dark moments of despair she felt like she might have deserved it for leaving her roots behind.
Over the next few months, seeing and feeling her body die was a daily struggle for Natasha. She longed for beauty, health, and the dream she came to this country for; freedom and a family, both of which were being cut short. Our staff tried to help her find peace with herself. With a lot of time, patience, acceptance, and caring we became a family, even though we would never be more than a substitute.
It was Natasha’s wish that no matter what had happened in her life she would not be forgotten, and that even though she suffered loneliness and tragedy her story of strength, beauty, and determination despite cancer would be told. Natasha died with only a few staff members around her and a dream that never subsided—in her next life, she would be beautiful and a mother again. I pray she will.
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