Dumb luck

Lucky guy, the aide said as he handed my son a chicken salad sandwich and a bag of chips. 

Lucky? A luckier person would have avoided lymphoma entirely, but I guess luck is relative. If you get out of bed just after 4 a.m., eat a quick breakfast and then vomit it all back up again before being driven two hours to the James cancer hospital, and if you survive the first two (of four) annoying procedures before 11 a.m., and if you then realize that you're feeling a bit peckish and ask the aide for a bite to eat before starting chemotherapy, and if the aide then delivers a chicken salad sandwich and your favorite brand of chips, that's some kind of luck! We have to take our victories where we find them.

In the four months since my son was diagnosed I have been lucky enough to avoid driving duty on four-procedure days, but yesterday I drew the short straw. Blood work, chest x-ray, two kinds of chemo, lumbar puncture--a scenic tour of hospital procedure rooms and a very long day. 

Twice my husband has been the designated driver on multi-procedure days that have stretched beyond twelve hours, but then he is also better equipped to entertain himself for long periods at the hospital. By the time he's ready to leave, he will know the personal history of everyone in the waiting room and will have stories to share about their interesting lives. 

I have a different method of surviving long hours of waiting: I mentally wrap myself up in a warm cocoon sequestered from the hospital milieu. Sure, I'm up for a conversation with my son and I'll ask for his help on whatever crossword puzzle questions fall within his areas of expertise (like what's on the flag of Mali or which U.S. state capital has the second-smallest population), but mostly I retreat and try to be anywhere but where I am. On good days I can read a book or article or draft a blog post on my phone even though I can't even see the letters on that tiny keyboard, or I'll play some mindless game that makes my eyes so blurry that I can't read road signs on the drive home.

It's hard to wrap myself in a warm cocoon, though, in those frigid hospital rooms. When we arrived before 8 a.m. yesterday the outdoor temperature was already close to 80 with humidity to match, but I carried a thick sweater because I knew where we were going. The aide who provided the lucky sandwich also gave my son one of those wonderful warm blankets, but no one ever offers me a warm blanket. 

Of course I'm not the patient, the person whose suffering is the center of everyone's attention, but that doesn't mean I'm not miserable. His illness shrouds my every thought, especially when he e gets coughing fits so severe that each cough feels like a dagger stabbing me in the heart, but I'm the healthy one in the room, the one who doesn't have to choke down a dozen pills a day or inject himself with medications that seem to make him sicker or shuffle through a growing pile of medical bills. Lucky me!

I try to hide my misery so I can be helpful to the sick guy; I count my blessings to counter the nagging malaise, but every blessing comes shrouded with a but. I found a great parking space--but it was in a hospital parking garage that fills me with dread. I remembered to put barf bags in my car--but I'm living a life that necessitates barf bags in my car. The treatment is allegedly eliminating every sign of lymphoma--but the side effects make me want to lash out at whoever is hurting my kid.

So I guess I'm lucky, ish, but I won't feel really lucky until we can banish the word lymphoma from our family's vocabulary. Meanwhile, I could really use a warm blanket.