PERMISSION SLIPS YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED

Permission slips help clear the way forward.

When you need one, it’s good to have, whether you’re asked to show it or not.

In school it was a Hall Pass, the golden ticket out of the classroom.

Do adults need a permission slip? And if so, for what?

My friend Susan made a delivery one day while I was powering through a cancer treatment regime, though ‘powering through’ isn’t quite accurate.

More like flailing, floundering, flopping. It was a neck deal with radiation that made it painful to breath, difficult to swallow, the usual.

The only thing different about my condition was it was on me and not some statistic or someone down the street.

F#ck me, right?

Susan had worked in the medical marijuana industry, a committed proponent after a corporate career.

She knew the medical effect of cannabis from her patients; I’d thought the category of medical marijuana as an excuse for old hippies to get legally high.

Either way, I wasn’t complaining.

Besides, I had some heavy duty pain management tools. Oxy and its brother, liquid oxy. Have you heard of liquid oxy? They roll that out for special occasions.

If you know yourself well enough, you never take oxy. There’s a dark road of addiction if you don’t know yourself well enough.

I didn’t have direct experience with opioid addiction, but the news of it resonated like the threat of cocaine, crack cocaine, and meth. One slippery slope after another.

Permission Slips For Cancer? Come On, Get Real

At the time, 2017, I was in self-imposed lockdown, with masks and hand washing before covid.

Susan and I met over the fence in my front yard. She was delivering her specialty brownies, the goods that brought to relief to many in my condition.

I asked how much I owed her for the haul she delivered.

“We don’t charge for people like you.”

“People like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“David, maybe no one told you. You’ve got cancer; you are a cancer patient. There are people like you.”

I’d been avoiding the news, confronting cancer, from the moment I’d heard it took up in my neck of all places.

“So this is good for my cancer?”

Saying “my cancer” was a trigger I didn’t know about. Right then I wasn’t sure if I knew anything.

I met Susan in the early 1980’s when we lived in Northwest Portland in the same apartment building when everyone was younger.

Forty years later, we’d followed each other, stayed in touch, and there she was giving me cancer permission slips.

“Your Cancer? Isn’t That Special”

From Susan:

“David, it’s not ‘your cancer.’ You’re not the only one. One way you’ll get better, get over this, is to not call it your cancer.

“Do you think you’re so much different than anyone else with cancer? Guess what, you’ve not that special. It’s not their cancer, your cancer, it’s just f#cking cancer. Do you understand?

“The more you identify with cancer, the harder the recovery, and you’re going to recover. Do you know that?”

In the world of permission slips, this was the biggest one I’d ever heard of.

Did I believe it? Did I think I’d recover? I wasn’t 100% on board until then.

The difference was Susan’s approach.

She seemed angry, accusing, and disappointed that I was drifting off on ‘my cancer.’

She knew the drill better than me. All I was doing was getting fried by chemo and radiation and sinking faster than I thought.

Her visit was a lifeline of hope. But, I ignored her advice on medical marijuana.

After one bad oxy pill for the grinding pain, and a pass-out dose of liquid oxy a day later, I went into full spiral. One family intervention later warning me to get my shit together, I nibbled down one of Susan’s brownies.

I was so doubtful that I didn’t register the relief until I did an inventory of body parts, like my neck.

Something changed, and changed for the better.

In a way, Susan signed my permission slip to get better, and it worked.

Signing Permission Slips

If you get a chance to do something helpful, give it a try.

You may say something that resonates beyond the time and place you are in.

I sat with my Mom and Dad, my mother in-law and father in-law, at the end of their lives, and felt them fight for their lives. They didn’t need permission slips to pass, didn’t ask for one, but a calming talk helps.

It’s okay to let go. You’re not a quitter, or a failure, or a disgrace, because you’re dying.

Think of Susan’s words when you visit someone in dire straits.

Your words can make a difference, whether you think so, or not.

Sprinkling a little of that angel dust helps.

Susan was one of my angels. Who are yours?