It is noon on Wednesday. I greet my patient as I have for the last five years. It is a quiet reservation she has with me, rarely missed.
She is pale and thin. She wears a delicate white blouse, loosely open below her neck so I can see a hint of her bandage. It begins the story of what she has bravely endured over the last year. There have been multiple surgeries to remove malignant tumors that keep appearing like weeds on a green lawn, that ignore even the most dangerous of sprays.
She hands me a grocery sack brimming with vegetables from her garden. It is heavy, and she sighs as she passes me the sack, relieved to rid herself of that burden.
She carefully sits down and begins, “I’m just so tired.” She explains how her 6-year-old son had started first grade that day, his first full day of school. Her 3-year-old daughter was excited about preschool the following week and her baby has graduated to only one nap a day.
I think of my oldest son leaving for college, already having had many “full” school days.
My patient and I have had a strong connection over the years, as we are both mothers of three children. Her plight is painful for both of us as we face serious illness while wearing a mother’s apron.
It began nine months ago with a brief phone call.
“Hi, it’s Jan, could you give me a call?”
She had to cancel her Wednesday appointment. She just needed to have a “funny-feeling” lymph node checked out. Her physician decided to remove it. “Nothing to worry about, but we should probably have a look at it.” That was sometime after Thanksgiving. By Christmas, the “nothing to worry about” had become radiation and chemotherapy.
Our sessions focused on how sick she felt, both from fear and chemotherapy.
“My baby is too young to remember me if I go … and who will write the Christmas cards?”
I thought about going online to research lymphoma. But the medical specifics were less important than the specifics of her personal and tender grip on life, praying for the chance to read “Good Night Moon” until her kids were too old to listen.
Tests too tough to pass
She endured repeated tests. Tests used to mean memorizing spelling words and state capitols – Dover, Delaware and Albany, New York. But with these tests, you can’t prepare, and the grade becomes gradation and prognosis.
She explained how the cancer had traveled to the bones in her sternum. The previous year, she smiled about her 6-year-old’s charting of Santa’s sleigh, one home to the next. We were now charting this dark visitor bearing a mother’s worst fear.
Winter soon became spring, and then summer. As her children blossomed, her body weakened. And now, as her son packs his school backpack, she is packing a small suitcase for a bone-marrow transplant.
“They say I should bring my computer and books, comfortable pajamas and my will.”
She weeps as she wonders which child she will hug last. Her parents will care for them, as she must be away for six weeks. Her husband will be with her during her long labor, as he was with all her children.
A loving gift
This is our last session before she leaves. I remind her of the pretty blue mug she had given me at Christmas. I tell her that the ceramic handle has a way of keeping the holder’s hand warm. I want her to hold on to it until we meet again. My tears soften my gift.
She tells me how when she’d stop for coffee before she got sick, the same pretty lady with flowing blond hair would ask, “Room for cream?” My patient reminds me, “We need to say ‘yes’ more.” I hug her goodbye.
As my son packs for college, I wrap up a few pieces of zucchini bread that I have baked from my patient’s gift of vegetables.
“Take it for the road,” I say.
“No thanks, Mom.”
I hand it to him and smile, “Why don’t you let me take care of you for as long as I can?”
My words are also the silent wish of a mother I know.
