It's Like Driving A Car At Night

Scouring the waiting room for a place to sit, it occurred to me that none of the men I started with were here anymore. After registering, I found a seat with a view that where I could see the service desk, people’s comings and goings, and the room where I was to have blood drawn. I used to come at 9AM and would be here until 2-3PM. It doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to, so it seems. Now I am finished by 11AM. I considered whether they had become that more efficient or have I just become institutionalized to their procedures.


In the exam room, I said to my nurse, “I don’t see any of the guys that were here when I started treatment.” She replied, “Some of them are in different treatment programs and some just aren’t here anymore.” That was the question I asked and the answer she gave but what I was really asking her was, “Are the guys I started with all dead?” If there is one thing that I’ve learned in treatment it’s not to compare my situation to the situation of others. Another person with the same diagnosis may have an entirely different treatment plan. But sometimes, like today, I couldn’t help asking the question.

Me and hospital waiting rooms have never been friends. Once I was left in one of the rooms for over an hour. So I came out and looked around and no one was there. In the midst of an emergency they forgot I was there and everyone went home. I don’t like the chemotherapy waiting area. It’s a heavy duty place. It was always over-crowded. The patients look sad. It feels hopeless and looks of death. They are always thirty to forty-five minutes behind. On one appointment after I had waited for more than forty minutes I said to the receptionist, “My appointment was at 10:30, it’s now 11:15. Do we need to reschedule?” The look the she gave me could have conquered Rome. It depresses me just to walk through to the appointment desk. Most of the time I wait in the area by the elevator. But today the waiting area wasn’t crowded and didn’t look so gloomy. So I took a seat to wait my turn. A man, who had just finished his treatment, asked me if the miniature poppy seed cupcake I was eating was any good. I said, “Yes it is, but there was only two left.” He said, “They used to have the best peanut butter cookies when I first started coming here for treatment.” I said, “I haven’t ever seen peanut butter cookies.” “How long have you been coming here?” I asked, “Seventeen years”, he replied. “That is a long time. I thought my coming for seven years was a long time, but not anymore”, I said. While I was fretful about whether all the men I started with had died, this man of eighty years has been in treatment ten years longer than me and wasn’t complaining. He had a great positive attitude. Just as soon as I start to feel sorry for myself life has a way of saying back to me, “Oh shut your mouth. Life for you isn’t that bad.”

When my nurse came for me I think she was surprised to find me sitting in the waiting area. She is use to finding me by the elevator. I got my hormone injection and was on my way; done for three more months. On my way out of the hospital I noticed a little boy sitting with his mother by the elevator. He looked like any other little boy sitting with his mother except he didn’t have much hair on his head. At first I thought he may be a chemotherapy patient. But he wasn’t bald. He had patches of hair here and there. I hadn’t planned to stop and talk to this little boy, but I couldn’t help it and I stopped to meddle this kid. So I stuck my nose. “What’s in the bag you are eating?” I asked. “Cheetos”, he said. “Are they any good” I asked. He replied “they are very good.” It was more than the fact that he was enjoying his bag of Cheetos. He had a look on his face that said, “Right now I don’t care about why I am here or my circumstances g, I have my bag of Cheetos and that’s what matters right now.”

Two women stopped to join my conversation to him. One of the women asked, “What are you here for?” The boy’s mother jumped in said, “He got burned in a January house fire.” I think the mother jumped in because she wanted to spare her son the pain of saying what happened. The woman said that she was burned in a fire house fire in Argyle. She said that she was burned on eighty percent of her body. The mom said that her son had gotten burns on thirty-eight percent of his body. I told the mother that he was in great spirits and looked remarkably well considering the tragedy happened just two months ago. I said goodbye and told the little boy I would be thinking about him.

Waiting for my car I couldn’t help but think that most adults I know would have been completely discombobulated after such a horrific tragedy. This little guy didn’t need much to make him happy. All he needed was a bag of Cheetos and his mom sitting next to him. If we allow ourselves to be driven by set-backs we fail to enjoy the things that really make us happy.

Seven years ago my urologist told me that I had BPH or an enlarged prostate. My PSA had climbed from 2.0 to 5.0 which prompted him to do a biopsy. I said to myself, it’s going to be okay while all the time I didn’t know who I was trying to convince. For the most part I was doing okay with the thought of having prostate cancer. I said it was, “An inconvenience.” I was concerned but not alarmed. However, in reality I was in serious anguish. I was thinking, “What’s going to happen to me?” “Will I see my kids get married?” “Will I see my grandchildren grow up?” “How will this affect my quality of life?” “How long do I have to live?” It was difficult to stay upbeat and positive. Over the years I developed strategies to keep hope alive and stay positive. I had two choices, die with cancer wallowing in my little mud puddle or live each day in harmony with my cancer. At some point and I don’t remember when but I decided that I didn’t want to die with cancer. I wanted to live with cancer. My treatment plan has included nineteen radiation treatments, four research studies, and Hormone Therapy.

I come from a family and sub-group of men who didn’t talk about their physical ailments. I don’t think it was being macho as much as it was about the fact that they believed that they had no right to complain about their circumstances after being delivered from so much. Emancipated slaves and early sharecroppers alike identified themselves with the Old Testament’s Hebrew slaves who were liberated by God. To them, faith was a belief in and commitment to a God that helped the poor and sick, and judged the arrogant and the strong. Like the Hebrew slaves, they believe that they were God’s chosen people and believed that through faith, they would also be delivered from lives of persecution. So, smaller things (which lead to bigger things) went undiagnosed and untreated and in many cases led to their early death.

My day died in 1996. He died from cancer at the age of seventy-six. Afterwards I learned that he had been driving himself twenty miles to cancer treatment. In March I found out that he was sick and he died in September. I remember him saying to me, “Buddy this old cancer is about to get me.” And it did. He didn’t talk about it and it saddens me that he went through this by himself. I can’t begin to imagine going it alone and keeping all that to yourself. Especially after the doctor told him how long he had to live.

When I first started this journey seven years ago I had no idea how I was going to get through it. But I had the faith that I could. My thought was to deal with it one day at a time. I had to learn to live that day because I wasn’t guaranteed the next day. I read something by a famous writer who used an analogy of driving a car at night to describe writing. "It's like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. You don't have to see where you’re going; you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you." Now as I look back, I see a parallel.