Our Fight with Cancer - Four

Cancer is a strange disease. My thoughts about cancer are strange. Maybe stranger than the disease.
I began to think of it as a little "pacman" running around inside of her body eating the good meat and the doctors as teenage boys playing "Space Station 13" with their video remotes.

Nancy wasn't sick...at least on the outside. She was sore from the operation but we were taking short morning walks within ten days of the operation.

It was hard to believe that there was anything wrong.

The terms, the words, the meetings with the doctors are all a blur to me now. They were then. At least to me...but not to her. I had already began to think of her as doctor in a soccer uniform.

She wasn't a doctor or a nurse. She was a hair dresser and a soccer coach. But, she was and is more than that...she is level headed. She know how to remain calm and do the right thing.

When anyone was injured in any way she was there while others stood and watched. She knew how to calm them down and what to do to keep them calm.  She had given CPR to a seventeen year old boy who was in cardiac arrest while his coaches stood and wondered. Unfortunately, the boy did not survive.

Her clientele as a hair dresser were mostly older people so she had heard all the treatments and remedies.

She was all ears and knew what the doctors were talking about.

A PICC line? I scratched my head. She knew.

I listened as they explained...only hearing half the words.

Damn! It can't be that bad. Not her...not Nancy...no cancer history...oh yes, her mother had some kind of cancer...something to do with the uterus...but she's okay...she beat it...

I felt better...until some time later...

"So, tell me again what the plan is," I asked while I drove her home.

"Chemo and radiation together."

"Is that bad?"

"It's not good."

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