eight

Some things are just unfair. It's not the she got the green cup and I wanted the green cup kind of unfair, but something much more heartbreaking. It's Sia, downstairs in D Ward right now, her baby sister probably curled up with her, mama keeping vigil on a chair beside the bed.

Sia is eight, and where her left eye should be is an angry red tumour. Her belly is swollen with more cancer, and because she was born here in Sierra Leone, she might well die because of it. It's deeper than that, though. It's not just that Sia is West African; it's the fact that she came to us at the end of October. At any other time in the year, we would have entered her into the Burkitt's Program, and that would have been that. Our incredible palliative care nurse, Harriet, would have overseen her care at the local hospital, Sia would have received chemotherapy, and she most likely would have been cured.

Instead, we are faced with the reality that we have only three weeks of surgery left. The hospital will close a week after that, and then we will sail away and little Sia will still be here. How is it possible that a matter of months, weeks maybe, might be the difference between life and death for this little one?

She's getting her first dose of chemotherapy here on the ship as I type this, but all we're hoping is that it buys us a little time. Time to figure out what to do with her after. Time to find someone who will make sure she gets to the hospital, to find someone who will pay for the treatment. How can we be sure that she'll get what she needs when we're so far away?

I stood in the hall with Dr. Gary and Stacia, the oncology nurse who's giving the chemo, (yet another example of the right person being here at the right time) and he said something that makes the way forward just a little more obvious.

Eight years is too short.

Sia means firstborn girl; if it were me instead of her in that bed, I'd be named the same thing, and I don't know what to do with that. What I do know is that eight is not enough.