The Waiting Room

Yesterday, had a mini-crisis on the way home from treatment. As I was getting on the freeway, I felt a warm drip under my shirt. Looking down, I noticed that my chemo catheter had come undone and there was blood in the line. Driving and freaking out at the same time, I kept looking under my shirt to see if I was bleeding at the surgical site. Nothing, just blood on one side of the line and clear liquid on the other. I turned around on the overpass and headed back to the hospital to get it checked out. Turns out, the needle in the port got jostled somehow and caused bleeding into my catheter. It eventually clotted in the line and then backed up the chemo medicine trying to come through. Nurses cleaned it up, gave me a saline flush and new bandages, turned the pump back on and I was back in business. Not fun.

Today, in the treatment waiting room there was a big crowd. All cancer patients waiting for their turn on the radiation machine, and all appeared to be in their 60s and 70s. Two of the ladies had on colorful scarves on their heads but dull, worn-out expressions on their face. I couldn't escape the absurd sensation that everyone was staring at me like I was intruding into a sacred circle of sick people. That waiting room is a kind of home at the hospital; with its comfortable chairs, ambient lighting and a serene Japanese-style water garden outside the picture window. Could they think I was an invader or tourist there to haughtily drink their apple juice and read from their magazines in my apparent state of youth and vitality? Once they heard my name called by the radiation tech and once they noticed the chemo pump on my shoulder, they seemed to settle into some kind of acknowledgment that my membership in this club was bought and paid for just as theirs was. There was no triumph for me in this, just as there was no unkindness intended on their part. We were all there to get well, and for a brief time, to share this small but pleasant waiting room where the paths of our individual cancers converged.