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11.21.03 @ 4:08 a.m. // he sees people dying. i see people living against the odds.
commence rambling entry about my trip: my dad had two appointments at md anderson thursday morning. i typically accompany him to houston to be company and a backup driver. it's always very hard for him to go to his appointments there. that hospital brings back bad memories for him, really bad ones, for obvious reasons. the memories scare him, and seeing those people in there, seeing what life is doing to them and what they have to face, it overwhelms him. i understand. ...i love it there. no, it's not fun, not by a long shot. i see the pain, too. i handle the pain of life, particularly the pain of other peoples' lives, very poorly in general. and i have memories that are too much for me. i haven't stepped foot on the ICU since summer 2002, and i'm not sure i could without doing some serious mental exercises beforehand. but things are different in there. those people, those cancer patients don't overwhelm me. they don't scare me. i love them more dearly than i can explain, not knowing them and all. there are no pretenses there. there are very few fake people. no one has time for that. the ever present realization of our own mortality never lurks too far beneath the surface, and small talk takes on a whole new look. i've never been there and not connected with someone. i've never been there and not spent at least a moment walking alongside someone before our paths fork again. i always come home just aching to tell someone about the people i met, to tell them those peoples' stories, just as if their stories were my own. so let me tell you about them. one woman, she had a charmingly quirky sense of humor and engaged everyone she could make eye contact with in conversation. she was sixty, but she could have easily passed for forty. she had just come from her mother's death bed, and was there in the hospital for a double mastectomy. i think she was not coping as well as she presented, but she tried her best, and her best was very good. there was a little old japanese man, who barely spoke a word of english but very enthusiastically attempted it nonetheless. he smiled a lot, and his smile made his eyes look like they would completely envelope his withered face. through his body language and his wife's limited translations, i learned that he was in his sixth year of chemo. six years of chemo, with eyes as bright as ever. they are not all so optimistic. like the chinese man in the corner, who looked like he was collapsing from the inside out. he'd been wheeled in for what was one of a half dozen appointments scheduled for that day. he needed help with his paperwork, so i did that. he didn't say much, but he didn't have to. i felt like we'd spent the whole time talking. i complimented him on his impressive collection of IVs, and he smiled at me, and i took his papers up to the desk for him. by the time i left he was sitting upright and waving goodbye to me. i sat in plastic surgery's waiting room for a while, and the conversation amongst the people turned to politics. here was a room full of broken, mostly elderly cancer patients, each falling apart in a different way, wholeheartedly voicing their support for the president and vowing to fight the war on terror to the very end. it was cute. the thought of that group relentlessly hounding osamabob was heartwarmingly hilarious. i saw a woman with osteoradionecrosis, like my dad. i never said more than 'hello' to her, but that's what she had. her neck was radiated, her mandible was missing, she had obviously just gotten out of surgery a few days prior. the swelling was still significant, the feeding tube was still in her nose. i smiled at her when she sat down across from me. i hoped my eyes told her what my mouth couldn't. i hoped she didn't think i was just another person shocked at her appearance. i wanted to tell her i know, but for all the talking and reaching i'd already done, i couldn't do it with her. and i felt horrible, and i do even now. she's the only one i saw today that makes me want to cry. how selfish is that? i really don't think it's because of the ORN, though... maybe some. i don't know what it is. i know her despondency because i've lived with it in my house. i know what she's facing, even if she doesn't yet. i couldn't-- i can't fix my dad, and i didn't know how... i just didn't know how with her. i don't even know what it was that i didn't know how to do. it made me feel so useless. the cancer center brings out the best in me, or maybe it brings out the sincerest me. i don't always have grace (see above), but i always feel real. those people are beautiful. they make me want to be around them all the time. i want to know their stories, i want to listen to their hurt, i want to connect to them and watch their eyes, i want them to smile despite everything. making some of them smile is one of the most singularly delightful things i've ever done. i feel in my element there. i fit there, more so than anywhere else i've been. i told my mom that if i could move anywhere, i would move to houston. even though i'm smitten with the east coast. even though i'd never see my long sought snow. i told her, too, that when it's my time to go, i want to die of cancer. i watched it in my grandpa, i watched it in my aunt, i watched it in my grandma, i watched it in my dad. i know what hell it can be, and what it does to the loved ones. but i want what they have. i want that gift. i want to face my mortality up close, i want to fade out of this life and into the next. is that crazy? maybe it is, but that's how i want to go. this is extraordinarily long.  last | host | next |