Little Things

I Swear That Girl Is Driving Me Crazy.

It stinks in here, I complain to my mother as we enter the cancer ward.

“Like what?”

“Like death.” I reply.

“You’re so melodramatic, honey.” Well that’s a great response coming from the drama queen herself.

“Come this way please.” A cute short woman with a brown bob who seems to be in her late 30’s says to me and my mom as she leads us down a long white hallway. I’m at the hospital and starting chemotherapy today. I got a briefing about this about 2 weeks before, and during that briefing I discovered that before my chemo could even start I had to get a little box sewed onto my muscle. That’s great right? Well it gets even better pretty soon I’ll be losing my hair.

The woman leads us into a room with a few other people in it, there was a girl there who looked to be about my age sitting in a chair fiddling with her long red hair. The nurse put me on a chair and put some numbing cream below my left collar bone –where the box was- then she got a needle and attempted to aim for the box. She missed, she missed, and she missed again, this was starting to get painful, could she seriously not draw any blood? Finally!

She then stuck a tube in me which was supposed to keep me hydrated. I peed, I peed, and I peed again.Jeez, to make matters worse every time I went to the bathroom I had to record how much I peed and if there were any traces of blood in it. Now the whole hospital knew I had a bladder the size of a chipmunk’s because my name was written on the log about 7 times.

 “You really got to pee a lot don’t you?” A feminine voice startles me as I make my way back from my 7th bathroom trip. I crane my neck to see who said that, it was the red haired girl who I’d first noticed when I came in here.

 “It’s not my fault they put all this water into me.” I defend.

 “That’s true, I was just like that the first time I started chemo. What’s your name?”

 “I’m Katie, what about you?”

 “I’m Myriam, but you can just call me Mimi.”

“Okay Mimi, so why are you here? Well besides the obvious.”

 “Well I’ve already been here two months so I’m starting to lose my hair, I have soft tissue sarcoma in my knee, and I’m terminal.” She probably knows I have no idea what soft tissue sarcoma is from the look on my face so she sighs and begins to explain. "It's basically cancer that develops in the soft tissues of your body, in my case it's the muscle around my knee."

 “I have synovial sarcoma in my knee, it usually forms around the joints and it's apparently a rare form of cancer. This all sucks doesn't it?” I ask looking up at her. "You know, not just the cancer. The fact that you don't get physically drained, but emotionally too. How are lives are just one big 'What if'. What if I graduate or get married or have kids? Or what if I don't make it to do any of those things."

There’s not much you can say after what we said because cancer’s different than most things. It's all the truth, but it's almost like you're walking on eggshells arouns someone with cancer. You don't want to sound like an insensitive asshole who tells them the cold hard truth that they already have to face every day, but you don't want to sound to over joyed either.

 “Most definitely, I don’t even get to live at home anymore, I’m stuck here. I'm terminal so who knows how long I'll live in a state like this.” I’m going to end up stuck here soon too, confined to four blank walls with nothing but a window and my imagination to let me escape. “Well, I guess I’m done here.” She nods towards a nurse who’s walking towards her. “See you around.” She says as the lady begins to pull out all the little tubes attached to her.