Other People's Problems

 So, yesterday....was hard. Good, but hard and it happened just as it needed to. I learned what I was there to learn ~It was a good day. 

  I drove to Virginia Mason, nothing new there, I was fine, the weather was great. I was cocooned in my own little world of music and thoughts all was well. I went to the usual process of checking in and Edgar got his usual greetings and then I was off to the second floor. I had so easily forgotten what was on the second floor... and why exactly I was there. I will give you a survivor's trade secret here, forgetting bad things, it is an art form, practice it when you have to. 

  I got off the elevator and BAM there it was. In big bold letters over the desk... how had I missed that the first time I was here? The Cancer Clinic. My response was visceral, this was wrong. I was waved over by a very nice woman and I apologized looking left or right for another office, I was going to Hematology/(Oncology) yes I know what that oncology means cancer...I had "forgotten" that part. 

 She took my name and assured me I was in the right place and motioned toward the waiting room. The first time I was here it had been nearly empty. Yesterday, it was pretty full. There were patients, clearly cancer warriors, in all stages of battle. There were wheelchairs and pale, papery skin with a bluish tints. There were concerned family members and tissue boxes. There was lots of hand holding and comforting and then, there was me. 

  I was not supposed to be there. Those people were in need of that place, I was not. I was fine. So being me, I fired up my laptop and shared my anxiety. HELP...
I have had friends and family go through chemo, I have lost many people I love to it. However I have never had it in my face, so suffocatingly close as it was for that forty minutes or so I waited my turn. I had never shuttled someone I love back and forth so that they could have poison pushed into them, an attempt to prevent  their own body from a slow and unwelcome attempt at suicide. 

 I felt so...small and helpless and human. I began to grasp the enormity of the ramifications of this room I was sitting in and the people who were in it. There was an older gentleman with his daughter and son in law, he was holding her hand and saying that he was thankful to her and that he didn't want to be left alone. It is...breathtaking, when someone, of an older generation, of a respectable age, shows his fear. I still have that child inside that is confident there are adults in charge and it is going to be okay. Yesterday shredded that. I cried for no good reason, overwhelmed by being a trespasser in this place. I had a little protein issue, nothing, NOTHING like what these people were going through. 

 The clinic was running late and there was a little anxiety in the room, it was a plague I could feel descending upon me and there was no fighting it. It was a white knuckle kind of thing. For me it was over in just over an hour. My levels were maintaining. I was on the watch list and bounced back to rheumy. I was relieved and feeling blessed and should have felt that weight lift off my chest but it did not budge. I made my next appointment with dread, knowing I would be back here, but that I was fine. Knowing that some of the people I had been sitting with, may not have that. Ghosts..all the rest of the day and into the night I was haunted by ghosts of memories of people who have shared with me their cancer scares or chemo appointments and I had put them on the prayer list and moved along. 

 Caring, but not getting attached, not wanting to feel their pain or share their fear. I knew fear, I had experience, and what I had learned is to remove myself from it, just like forgetting why I was on the second floor. I have my own fear, not of being alone, alone is safe. Of feeling too much of other's pain or fear, because that is a language I understand. It is a deep pit I have struggled to climb out of so many times in this life and yesterday I realized just how scary other people's problems are. How I have been avoiding them all my life. Last night, they caught up with me. It is hard to take in another's pain, to acknowledge it and measure it out and realize that you are helpless to intercede. I have no pithy advice or sage warnings...I have nothing but tears and compassion. It has come to me late in life, but it is here and I will embrace it and learn. ~Still here on Earth, still trying hard to be better not bitter. Love and health to you~