Something remarkable happens in most Chicago cancer clinics. Medication? usually. Cures? sometimes. Champagne? absolutely...!
Reporting in three times every year for the last 16 survivor-ship years, I can report this to be a remarkably unreported fact. Here's the picture. You sign in, sit down, and while you're waiting for your treatment you glance through the newspapers. Chicago's daily diet of headlines awaits: "Man gets 2 years for hiding body in toilet," "Gangs kill mother & baby in front of church," "Beauty contest judge attacked with winner's trophy."
Ten minutes into this stuff and you think maybe dying from cancer isn't the worst thing in the world after all. Maybe living in this world is worse! But then they call your name, and you find the champagne in there waiting for you.
Not in a flute, but in the caring hands and tender smiles of the nurses, techs and docs. Cancer is an ugly, grim disease, but there's never anything ugly or grim about these advocates. I've been in almost every department to this place, but next to the nursery, this is the happiest. Don't ask, you gotta be here.
This is how I see it. These professionals chose to join us survivors wage this battle. Like elegant matadors, they enter the ring with one main mission: Tame the beast. And so they scan me, inject me, medicate me all according to the latest protocols. However, it's the way they do it that gives you the confidence to hope and the reason to comply.
These insidious little cells don't melt before smiles. But when the smiles come from deep inside an acutely caring professionalism, this helps you keep stepping back into the ring. Facing down the beast. By the time I leave, I'm almost ready to face those cockamamie headlines...
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When I was a kid we had an old family friend whose philosophy was we all begin to die from the first day we are born but it is what you do with that time in between that counts. You are using that time to the fullest and bring joy and thought to all who read your columns. Many of my classmates have asked about you and I know they read your blogs. See you at the Reunion in 2011, Keith
ReplyDeleteKeith, I appreciate the warms sentiments. You're right -- it's quality not quantity that makes the difference on this journey. And if some of your classmates are checking me out on my blog, that's almost as gratifying as when I was teaching US History back in Room 233.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the staff that you speak of appreciate your kind words. And I know you share your feelings with them!
ReplyDeleteStay positive!
Anything that can make a cancer patient more comfortable and help him/her during this devastating disease, I'm all up for! I'm glad you can find some comfort out of such a horrific situation!
ReplyDeleteCancer IS "horrific." Among other things, it backs you into a corner where you have to start thinking the unthinkable. But so long as you're in that corner with fellow survivors and caring specialists, it can be a little less daunting. I think about this when I hear DC talking about Medicare reform. They're right, of course, and yet without the Medicare coverage I've had all these years...well, I wouldn't be writing to you.
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