CANCER MEMORIES: UNEXPECTED MOMENTS OF LOVE AND KINDNESS

I made a list of cancer memories to use in my memoir. Not all of them made the cut.

A book needs the big stuff; these are the smaller cancer memories:

I

During my caregiver years I got to know the local Safeway pharmacy. I picked up prescriptions for my job, which was looking out for my in-laws.

I got to know the pharmacists and the assistants from standing in line, then moving up and giving their birth dates. It was a pretty normal exchange week after week, year after year.

After my in-laws passed, I stood in line to pick up a prescription for my wife; then I showed up with one for me.

I’d been diagnosed with HPV 16 throat cancer and getting ready for the treatment business. I had a prescription for an anti-nausea, the one used for chemo patients.

I did the usual, got the pills, and waited for the consultation.

“This is for you?” she asked. She knew it was for me, but still surprised me with her question.

I nodded like a doomed man waiting for the walk to the gallows, looking down so I didn’t notice the lady coming out from behind the counter. They never come out, had never come out over the the years.

The tiny lady in a lab coat gave me the sort of hug, a wordless embrace, that was full of more hope and love than I encountered from professionals during the whole ordeal. She looked up and showed the sweetest expression ever.

Maybe it wasn’t hope and love, but that’s what I saw.

II

During the treatment phase to avoid dying from cancer, I walked past the same desks over and over. My check-in was just past the scheduling people.

Since I was on the lookout for interesting people to include in my memoir, I secretly harassed the two in scheduling. They looked a little ornery and bored, like they didn’t like their jobs.

I couldn’t blame them. Instead of cruising by on the way to the radiation room, I made a point of saying hello, and good morning, the sort of greetings you give when you start a new office job and don’t know anyone yet.

They were part of my job whether they knew it or not. So was the Safeway pharmacist, except she got it better than the man and the woman at the desk.

Over the weeks, I caught on to their real work. Some days I’d take a chair near them to watch people show up. For the most part I saw folks I promised I’d never be like; they looked like the walking dead, which is what I eventually achieved.

One day an extremely bedraggled old man limped off the elevator like every step might be his last. The man at the front desk lit up more than I’d ever seen. He got to the guy before he was three steps off the elevator and talked to him.

I couldn’t hear what they said, but the old guy lifted his head, looked at the administrative guy while they talked, and passed by me like he’d just caught his second wind.

The hospital guy went back to the phones and gave me a look I didn’t understand just as a woman came out of the treatment waiting room. She spoke to the check-in nurse, then turned to walk past the schedulers, but the scheduling lady came out from behind the counter to block her.

The face I usually saw on the scheduling lady was a work face, and I was already on the schedule. The face she showed the woman leaving treatment was a beatific image from a Renaissance painting come to life. We were all in there for radiation, or something related, but the woman’s face radiated just the opposite.

Was it hope and love? I think so.

III

When I was healthy enough, I went back to the gym I lifted in, back to the sauna. My first time back in the heater I answered a few questions about cancer, radiation, and chemo, and how I’d lost a ton of weight so fast.

“What I can say is that chemo runs around inside the body burning up fast developing cells. Everywhere,” I said. “It kills quick replicating cancer along with every other new cell.”

Maybe I was right, or a little right. Either way it was a sickening thought. I think the chemo was still getting busy at the time.

The small group in the sauna was quiet, except for one guy. He looked mid-twenties, in shape but not pill and powder shape. He sat on the top bench, the hot seat.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” he said. “That means you only have the best cells left, the cells that tell you who you are, not the new ones, not the latest fad cells.”

I agreed with him, but didn’t know what he meant. It sounded good.

“Right now you have the chance to make something with the strongest building blocks in your body,” he said. “If chemo killed the bad cells, you’re left with the good ones. Now you get to do something great with them.”

I never saw they guy again. On the way out of the gym I looked in the mirror. Instead of the man with yellow skin and lines on his face, I saw my mug through the eyes of someone who could change.

The message of hope and love came in many disguises when I needed it most and didn’t know. These are the cancer memories that made a difference, that make a book to guide others through the wilderness.

When you think you’ll never forget awful cancer memories, look for the small things.