My friend, whom I’ll call “Mike,” started chemotherapy today.
It is a bit intimidating walking into a building where you know that all the patients are there to get a course of toxic medicine. This stuff is pretty ugly – harsh, killer chemicals that hunt down and destroy even uglier and deadly cancer cells. It is like unleashing a team of mercenaries that care more about destruction that justice. Sometimes they inadvertently, yet without remorse, take out the good guys like hair follicles, appetite and stomach serenity.
You truly don’t want to call in the chemo team to do their business unless the therapy they mean to deploy is absolutely necessary. In Mike’s case he and his wife have decided it is and so today they started out on a new path of their journey.
My job, whatever that seems to be today, is easily put on hold so that I can go to the hospital and sit by Mike’s side as the mercenaries are inserted a drip at a time. It will take five full hours in the hospital, every other week. I plan to be beside him as much as is possible.
I’m not a saint.
This isn’t a sacrifice.
There are people, much nobler than I, who have the patience to sit with patients. I had to admit to Mike today that as much as I’d like him to think that I was there for him I knew he didn’t really need me to be there. The hospital put a rolling shelf of movies within arms’ reach of him, possibly being tipped off how much he likes the cinema. I know he has a Kindle, and with his love of books five uninterrupted hours of reading could feel like heaven to him.
But five uninterrupted hours with Mike sounds like heaven to me. So I got the hospital to print me off a schedule of his treatments and I sat beside him like I was HIPA endorsed family. I asked questions of his doctor, interacted with his nurses and pharmacists, and made myself at home. I had decided that if questioned I would tell them I was his brother. “You’re a Freeman?” they would ask to which I could honestly with my hand on the Bible answer, “Yes, I too am a free man!”
Here is the payoff – normally I get an hour or two with Mike each month; now I’ll get at least 10 for the next half year. And you need to pray for Mike because I’m not always the most sensitive guy in the hospital. Last time I spent the night with him in this place he told me his incision only hurt when he laughed. Of course I kept him stitches half the night.
Yes, there are evil things that are dying a slow death inside of Mike right now, but there are also new infusions of life and love that I see in him each day, and so as long as I know he is tethered to a chair I am selfishly going to strap myself down right next to him.
For more from Chad, please visit his site at: http://www.chadestes.com/
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