Across the way, I hear a bell ring. The entire room erupts in applause. I join in. I realize that some one has finished an entire year of treatment. A YEAR! There's a sweet elderly man who is chatty next to me. He tells me how he rang the bell the first time. He said he thought he would be done forever. That was not the case. He is currently being treated for his 3rd type of cancer. He said he won't ring the bell again because you're never really done. I tell him he looks great to which he replies..I wish I felt as good as I look. I feel sad for him and proud of him at the same time. He's a spunky little man with a camouflage ball cap and blue eyes. I look around and I feel for all these people. I'm convinced cancer is never really done. It's such an evil parasite of a disease that just keeps coming back. It is a thing I literally hate. It has taken children and young adults and middle aged people I've known and it's straight from the devil.
My IV has started now. My little friend told me it looks like Karo syrup. I told him that it is and that's how I'm so sweet. He laughed.
It's cold in here. Frigid even. Blankets abound in this place where they are obviously trying to preserve the inhabitants like a walk-in freezer. My guess is that germs don't live very well in cold places. My friend finishes his treatment. I notice his bent little body as he gets up to leave and the difficulty in just getting his jacket on. He is one of the frail ones worn from multiple fights for his life. And yet...he's a jolly soul. I want to nap. But there's incessant beeping from multiple machines. I will just "rest my eyes" as my Papa used to say.
What seems like seconds later, I awake to my own machine beeping. My infusion is done. The lady to my left asks me if I had a good nap. I smile and tell her I looked forward to it all week. They come with her 3rd bag of treatment. I hear her telling the nurse about how her hair fell out last time in the shower. She will still be here for a while. I smile at her and wish her a restful day as well. As I walk outside and the sun warms up my very cold skin I think about all these people and all the hours they spend staring at each other from the little recliners while life busily continues outside. Time marches on. It was one of the first hard lessons I learned as a teen..that nothing lasts forever as I said goodbye to my lifelong best friend during her epic period of rebellion. I sat in the floor of my laundry room and cried over the friendship I was losing. Realizations. Some are eye-opening and some are terrifying. At the end of that situation, she did return to her senses and we reconnected. She moved back to Augusta but another life without me had begun. It was never the same.
There's lots of time to reflect when you're waiting on an IV drip. Each chair holds an entire world that I'm not privy to. Each person has a story and an experience. In that light, I wanted nothing more than to be kind to everyone there. I would have hugged everyone if I could. Instead I just saw them in their present circumstances and said a prayer and smiled. If only we saw everyone..really saw them in their current situation to the point we just loved on them and never became angry at how they were acting. If we could deliver grace on a regular basis to our children, our husbands, our coworkers, the mean woman in Wal-Mart, the friend who never calls or the waitress at the restaurant who really doesn't want to be at work today. If you need help in seeing people for who and what they are made of, maybe you should sit in the chemo room a while and glance into each life. It truly bestows a wider perspective.
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