No Wailing in the Treatment Room
I announced my impending death to the world with a cute AI-generated picture on Facebook and my bonus list of the “Top Ten Best Things About Having Cancer”.
Number 6: “Finally, my dog will outlive me.” Who wouldn’t hope for that?
My post was a success, lots of reactions and comments! The light-heartedness was sincere. Stage 4 adenocarcinoma is nothing to get hung about. I’m a lucky guy and haven’t missed out, smile on a dog.
After some initial reluctance my friends caught my breeze — engaging over old times, catching up with their own stories, tasteless but hilarious hospital jokes, frank questions about symptoms and prognosis and what happens when you die. The one person who said she would pray for me really meant it. I accepted this as a gift, she wasn’t just finding something to say.
Philosophy, as they say, is a walk on the slippery rocks, throw me in.
Not to downplay other people’s fears. But what surprised me is that most patients I met had the same outlook as me, after any initial shock they faced. I just got there without the initial shock.
I first noticed this in the IV treatment room, the inner sanctum where we cancer homies return six or eight times a month to sit for hours at a time in reclining chairs while they drip toxic, life-extending biotech chemical cocktails into our neck veins. The staff keep it comfortable even if it’s not the Ritz. I have a favorite chair, and so do the others. Mine has a heater-massage combo and is near the candy jar, the perfect place to catch up on email and write this story.
What gets me most is the calm and good humor. People are wonderfully adaptable. The nurses are kind, easy with a laugh. The patients, including me, are good with the new normal. Nobody is bawling or panicking or even looking sad. It’s all very matter of fact.
Reality interrupts. An elderly woman talks to a relative in pained Cantonese, clutching her stomach. A young man who has lost his hair curls up motionless while his Department of Corrections guard hulks silently over a tiny laptop.
Then there’s a man about my age in a loud Hawaiian shirt. His throat cancer is in remission so he’s off to league sports practice after a monthly check-in. We tell funny stories, a little too loud for the room. He’s a great conversationalist I’d love to meet over a beer and pizza, except that I can’t drink beer and he can’t eat pizza. Iced tea and risotto, then.
What I’m saying is that adversity brings out the best, by which I mean normalcy. Laugh about it, shout about it… either way don’t cry in the cancer ward. We find joy in what we have. Or do cry, your life your choice. Life goes on regardless of how we think about it, or how much we have left.
Do you have any observations, a cancer story, a tasteless hospital joke? Please comment or message me directly, I’d love to hear it!
