In 2012, in an effort to support our family, Ita and I started selling food from our home to support ourselves and our two kids. She was very talented at cooking; I wasn't, but I wanted to help since I was no longer able to work regularly due to changes in the law there - even as a permanent resident.
chocolate rumballs
bolu kukus - a type of steamed cupcake
birthday cake
cupcakes
fruit pies
pastries
burgers
donuts
And so many other foods, some of which you wouldn't recognize!
In August 2014, my wife bled nonstop for 3 weeks, and then for another week. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer, stage 2B. We decided to conceal the risk of death from our children; we knew they'd suffer enough as it was without that weighing them down. She looked so healthy that the public sometimes doubted that she was even sick - I had to display the diagnosis for media, and let one reporter follow us to the radiotherapy room.
She underwent chemotherapy and external radiotherapy at the regional hospital, RSUD. (Rumah Sakit Umum Daerah = Regional Public Hospital) Margono and we traveled to a cancer hospital, RSK. (R.S. Kanker = Cancer Hospital) Dharmais, a few times for internal radiotherapy in October through December. I later learned, through research, that the program of treatment they used on Ita has been around a long time and has been amply demonstrated as not too effective. :(
Our situation became public and then went viral because of a blogger who calls herself Sii Olipe. We were very grateful for her help, and the charitable organization she devoted time to, Sedekah Rombongan, often provided free ambulance transportation to and from hospitals, as well as occasional monetary support, along with other charities, such as Lazis Mufazza, Sambal Layang (actually a service provided by the restaurant of that name), and Gerindra (a political party that provided ambulance service). Mostly, we used SR and LM, and we were SO grateful for every charity's help!
Because of her efforts to bring attention to our plight, we became nationally (and, amongst Indonesians abroad, internationally) famous, appearing in online and print media, a radio show, and almost 10 TV shows between 2014 and 2016, including Hitam Putih, Ini Talkshow, CurHat Perempuan, and Panggung Impian. I actually turned down the first show (on TVOne) that invited us because they were controversial and sensationalistic, preferring to bring different guests on the show to confront each other. Guests often appeared masks and things sometimes got ugly, but sometimes resulted in reconciliation.
People we knew were supportive, and many strangers also came forward. We became fast friends with Lilin, Yudi and Tono, among others, who were all kind, helpful and caring. Yudi, in particular, was incredibly supportive and we were so very fortunate that he took time out of his very busy schedule to help us again and again and again! (I'm not sure if they'd want their photos up, so I won't post them.)
Little did we know that the offers of donations that we received and rejected might've made a difference. Some people still wanted to support us, so we took donations as payments and made food to donate to nearby orphanages.
My wife was both strong and stubborn and, even when we asked her to stay home and rest, she would come out and sell. Eventually, the side-effects of her treatments weakened her to the point that she rarely did this.
Sometimes, our children would help make or sell food. But, mostly, we did it ourselves with the help of Ita's mom, Sutarti, and the two assistants we had to hire, Ms. Uus and Mrs. Yani. Unfortunately, most of our photos from our life there are gone - a thief stole my hard drive, and the CDs of older images are at my ex-brother-in-law's house.
In December, Ita was declared safe. But she was determined to believe, to be strong and healthy, that you couldn't tell her otherwise. She even kept selling food and, at one event, we took this photo together (yes, she's got me off the floor!).
By April 2015, I doubted it. The doctors in Jakarta had not given her the normal number of internal radiotherapy treatments for cervical cancer because it had responded so well to it and the chemotherapy, and there were signs. The obgyn doctor didn't do thorough exams to make sure she was safe.
In early Autumn, doctors detected what I'd suspected - relapse. Treatment was delayed because they were getting the radiotherapy machine at the hospital in our town, but that pushed treatment back to the start of 2016. More chemo, then radiotherapy once the machine was ready and the staff had been trained.
By March, treatments were declared a success again. I was skeptical because, again, the doctors had decided to cut short the radiotherapy because of how well the cancer responded. The doctor who made the decision was new at this, and probably overconfident.
I had been reporting about Ita's condition on my Facebook page but, at some point, I created two sub-pages, one English (News about Ita) and the other Indonesian (Berita Ita), to report to both audiences. I had to "sanitize" the Indonesian version because of laws there, so all criticisms were relayed directly to the hospitals' "humas" - public relations - and on the English page.
In May 2016, Ita's kidneys were affected because the cancer had secretly grown and pushed against her ureters (tubes which drains pee out of the kidneys into the bladder). She was hospitalized within a day of having the "moonface" symptom. She was drowning in her own body fluids so the internist (who was a stomach specialist), instead of calling on the urologist (an expert in kidneys), he decided she needed dialysis to get the extra fluid out but that was after a couple weeks of delays. A couple of weeks later, after me pressuring the hospital because he refused to answer my questions, he finally admitted that he couldn't help her (yet continued to treat other kidney patients), and she was sent to RSUP Sardjito (R.S.U. Propinsi = provincial public hospital) in Yogyakarta in June. She often had to be given oxygen, and this need increased over time because of the fluid in her lungs.
More dialysis, slow efforts by the doctors, and then they finally realized that she needed a double nephrostomy (tubes going directly from the kidneys, out her sides, to drain her urine into bags). These were implanted in July 2016. Her kidneys were phase 3+ and 4.
At some point after this, most likely 2016 but possibly in 2015, Ita's mom decided that Ita was going to die and that she needed to save her soul. She secretly started pressuring Ita to divorce me (only Muslim men are allowed to be married to non-Muslim women, and never the reverse). She also brought my kids into the conspiracy, which created a psychological dilemma they couldn't resolve because they loved their mom, grandmom and me, so they said nothing to me...until weeks after she died. In 2016, she recruited her younger brother, Ajat, and his wife, Endang, to this "war", and added her son, Aji, in 2017, as well as a family friend in Yogya, Rita, who is a psychologist. They all put a lot of pressure on Ita to get rid of me, and even applied destructive psychological manipulation.
Ita had routine problems with bacteria getting in her nephrostomies, requiring repeated drives in charity ambulances to Yogyakarta's RSUP. Most of them were MRSA and sometimes we couldn't get an antibiotic to treat the infection. Also, we'd have to go to Sardjito to have her nephrostomy tubes and bags replaced because the urologist in Margono couldn't do it without causing her a LOT of pain (I could hear her screaming from the lobby), which further traumatized poor Ita.
A few months later, the combined effects of the nephrostomies, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and her losing battle against the cancer prompted her to have our neighbor cut off her hair because she noticed that her mom was made sad when she'd brush Ita's hair and large amounts would come out.
By the end of January 2017, Ita had completely caved in to her mother's will and agreed to her demands to divorce me. The plotting continued. Her physical condition started to decline more rapidly and she wasn't eating and drinking correctly anymore.
In February, after recently having been released from hospital and then having to go to RS Sardjito to change the tubes of her nephrostomies, Ita was admitted into the ER where she told me that if I didn't become a Muslim we couldn't stay together. She never used the word divorce. I was devastated. Up until this point, I was almost always the one in the hospital with her. After this blow, however, and discovering that my kids and mom-in-law already knew, I lost my desire to do more than take the kids to see her daily. Ita's mom spent hours there every day and filled her ears with poisonous lies about me, got Jasmine into trouble with Ita, and even caused a rift between Jasmine and Uncle Ajat, whom Jasmine loved very much. Partway through Ita's stay in HCU, Jasmine told me that her grandma was badmouthing me. I thought it was just shock and fear, not yet knowing what she'd been doing behind my back, so I told Jasmine to forgive her. If only...
On March 3, while I was visiting her, she started having a seizure caused by hypoglycemic shock. She was supposed to have a blood transfusion started around that time, but it was canceled and I had to hold her down while the nurse worked to stabilize her. It took a couple of hours before her brain started working normally. That was the last real conversation we had, and it wasn't entirely cogent because she was so far gone (we didn't know until later that she was already stage 4) due to the fact that her brain was struggling and malnourished. I left thinking they would make sure she'd be okay.
Saturday, she had another seizure. Neither Sutarti nor anyone else visiting, or even the nurses, contacted me to let me know. I arrived with my kids to the shock of this. I was pretty upset, and so were the kids. I made it clear to her that their mom was going to die.
When I told Sutarti that Ita wanted to have her corpse donated to medicine or science, she insulted me by saying she didn't believe me. Rather than fight with her, I acquiesced and allowed Ita to be buried in the same graveyard with her father, maternal grandmother, elder brother, and uncle-in-law in Kroya, a once-quiet village in Cilacap county.
On March 5, 2017, I took the kids to see Ita again. She was barely functioning. They had finally intubated her to give her food, but black liquid was coming up, so they delayed that (and still hadn't given the blood transfusion). Jasmine insisted on staying there but Iregi was overwrought and not one family member offered ANY help with him. I took him home. Hours later, just before Jasmine and Endang called, crying, and told us that Ita was dead, a major downpour started (I'm not kidding!). Our best friend, Yudi, who'd steadfastly helped us through the last 2+ years, drove us to the hospital.
Ita died of complications of her cancer (by then stage 4), specifically the seizures from hypoglycemic shock, which was partially self-induced due to guilt. However, the doctor's report declared that the cancer had killed her. I wrote an article about this shortly thereafter and disappeared from Steemit for months.
Even on the last day we had a conversation, 2 days before, she had still wanted to go back to Yogya to continue the next stage of treatment.
Ita, we miss you so much! I wish we'd made different decisions. Our children and I still grieve for you, although we're doing our best to move forward with our lives. It's been hard at times! You'd be so proud of our kids - they're both doing really well in school and people say great things about them!
Since you were a chef...
We'll always remember you like this.