In April 1997, when the Gastroenterologist told my 54 years old father, Yahya Amjad, he had Tuberculosis in his intestines. It was a great shock for all of us, my mother, sister, and two brothers. The doctor started the treatment, but all in vain. After two weeks, his condition was worse; he had a high fever with severe shivering. That was not T.B.
The doctor took all his tests, including blood, urine, etc., and found them clear. Ultimately only one test was left, and that was the bone-marrow test. The doctor took a sample of bone marrow from his backbone and sent it to the laboratory. When the result came, that was dreadful. The report stated that my father had Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).
AML is the most dangerous kind of cancer, and only one out of a thousand people suffer from this kind of disease. Unluckily, there was no treatment for AML at that time except bone-marrow transplantation. But it was not successful for people above the age of fifty.
My father, Muhammad Yahya Amjad, was a compassionate and knowledgeable person. When the doctor told him that he had AML, he remained calm. I know he was pretending. Anyhow, we took him to Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital. There Dr. Javed told us that our father’s disease was at the last stage, and there was no hope. We requested him to start the treatment. Eventually, he agreed and started the treatment.
Firstly he carried out all the tests again, and after two days, they started chemotherapy. The doctor told us that the 13th or 14th day of chemotherapy could be very critical. As in this therapy, apart from cancer cells, all the healthy cells are also killed.
At last, that horrible day came; it was the 12th day of chemotherapy when my sister phoned from the hospital and said, “come to the hospital, father is no more.” I screamed and rushed to the hospital. The time was 4:00 a.m. On the way to the hospital, I drove my car and looked at the dawn’s rising. It aroused a feeling of anger in me. I started staring at the sky and complained to God that “if you are here, give me the proof, and I want to see my father alive when I get to the hospital.” I don’t know I was justified to think like that or not, but at that moment, that was my spontaneous thought.
When I got there, my father, Yahya Amjad, was in ICU, and he had survived that attack. The attack was severe cardiac arrest. The doctors did the brain scanning, and that was also clear. All the doctors in the hospital were surprised at how he could survive such a severe cardiac arrest. That was a miracle.
It seemed that death was prevailing everywhere. Every patient was waiting for death with a false smile on his face.
I knew that was only God’s gift for us and the acceptance of my prayer. After three days, doctors shifted him to his private room from ICU. He was improving gradually and was on medicines to improve his blood count.
During his treatment, he had regular blood tests to record his blood count, as it was growing or not. I can’t forget my experience at that cancer hospital. It seemed that death was prevailing everywhere. Every patient was waiting for death with a false smile on his face. There were patients of every age, a small child of 9 or 10 years, a young girl of about 21 years, my father 54 years, etc.
My father suffered a lot, and it was nearly a month we were in the hospital. The doctors allowed us to go home, but he warned us to be very careful about cleanliness because my father’s immunity was very low.
My father was a writer and a poet as well. He was an over sensitive and loving person. I am his eldest daughter, and I remained very close to him throughout his illness. I still remember the day when he said to me, “I don’t want to go into the darks of death, want to live with all of you, I want to come back to my life.”He wished to live more with us. We prayed for this all those days.
During those days of remission, Yahya Amjad completed the second part of his history book. Perhaps God gave him time to complete his book and provide us with the courage to bear that loss. After five or six months of remission with healthy immunity, the doctors resumed the chemo. According to the doctor, this second chemo was essential. Due to this second chemotherapy, once again, his blood count dropped to zero point.
Doctors gave him injections to improve his blood count, but this time, his blood count did not improve and stopped at 500. That was not enough. That should be 6000.
And one day, he spoke to his mother, “Maa, I have decided from my heart that I will now go into the darks of death.”
Once again, he was in the clutches of fever, shivering, abdominal pain, mouth ulcers, and vomiting. It was again that deadly AML. My father was rapidly moving towards death, and there was immense sorrow among our family members. For two or three days, he kept silent. Perhaps he was convincing himself to accept death. And one day, he spoke to his mother, ‘Maa, I have decided from my heart that I will now go into the darks of death.’ It was December 1997, his cancer was at the last stage, and he was becoming weak and turning into a skeleton, a typical cancer patient.
One evening he uttered in my ear in a frail voice, ‘ my dear daughter, please do something. I am feeling extreme weakness; otherwise, I will collapse”. I had no answer for him. A day after, the doctor advised blood transfusion, but his body did not accept it. The same night he had another heart attack, which proved fatal, and he went into a coma. He came out to his senses for a moment and started staring at us, as he could not speak, and then I saw tears coming out of his eyes. He knew he was dying. Then he left this world for a never-ending journey. That was 5th January 1998.
From April 1997 till January 1998, the whole illness period of Yahya Amjad was nine months, the same period which a fetus takes in a mother’s womb to become an infant. My father’s death entirely changed my thoughts about life. Now I have understood that our real destination is somewhere else. We have been here for a while, and then we have to go back to where we came from.