My Chemo Buddy and Her Husband
Feb 6, 2018:
I was at Trader Joe’s this morning and this guy came up to me and said he noticed me there all the time. He said he and his wife saw me at chemo last week. His wife also has cancer. He took a job near the hospital so he could be near his wife during chemo and still make a little money. They apparently observed my whole "port" fiasco during infusion last month. He left halfway through to go to work. By the time he got back to infusion, he said his wife was in tears telling him my story. She said she wasn't crying because she felt sorry for me but because of the way I responded. All that to say... you never know who's watching. I thought that my situation that day was a private matter. Everyone was very involved and busy trying to catch up on both sides of the ‘computer shut down thing’. The man said he felt he really needed to tell me how refreshing it was for his wife, to see someone not caring if they offend someone, by praying over them in the moment. Humbling.
Fast forward about a year. . . .
I’m still doing chemo and his wife has been in steady remission for quite some time and is now cancer-free. We’ve become sweet friends. I talk to her on the phone and catch up with her husband weekly at the grocery store. We know things about each other that only infusion buddies would know about each other. Oddly enough, hardly anyone asks each other’s names. It’s kind of a thing. But of course, I know everyone’s name. Over the years, I’ve lost many sweet friends from my chemo days. I’ll treasure them as long as I live. I know we shared parts of ourselves that made us all better humans.