In the Trenches

I wrote about the waiting room at the Langone Medical Center in NYC last January. I am a little uncomfortable about the whole cancer as war analogy, but what fits this struggle better? Cancer is dreaded for good reason. Our own bodies changed, metamorphosed into an enemy within, one that knows our weaknesses and our strengths.

At the Burr Proton Therapy Treatment Center in the basement of the Yawkey building at MGH all the patients are using the giant cyclotron but their cancers are all different. As I sit each day waiting for Orion to finish his time under the gun I observe the other patients and the staff. As a naturalist, observation is all.

My current favorite is a frail little girl, perhaps ten or twelve years old. Her skin is pale and thin, almost translucent. Her blond hair has been reduced by her treatments to a few hundred thin limp hairs, evenly falling down around her visible skull. Her eyes are a clear and piercing blue and looks right back at me when she catches me watching her. A small smile plays at her mouth. She is every bit as beautiful as her mother who is serene and rock steady as she helps her daughter rise from the wheelchair and walk to the cyclotron gantry treatment room. There is no hint as to the character of her cancerous enemy. Today is her last day and I will miss her. While she was in treatment her mother was asked by Paul, the waiting room receptionist, if she would like to be on the hospital mailing list for newsletters. Her reply was swift, no thank you. I knew she felt as I did, I want nothing to do with this place, these people, this year. I want to sweep it into the dusty corners of my heart and mind.

There is a Muslim family, the father perhaps my age, confined to a wheelchair and attended to by his wife and son. He looks defeated in his slumped shoulders and vacant eyes. His head has a terrible wound from his surgery at the very top of his skull. The dessert plate sized scar shows me that his skull was opened up and the large section removed has been artfully put back giving him a strange tonsorial bald patch, like a monk. His wife exudes an air of confidence and control, making intelligent little facial expressions when the father is asked questions by the medical staff. It is clear she would reply differently.

There are a whole series of handsome young men with no visible signs of damage. Their hair is intact, they move with the ease of thirty-year old athletes. They are all somber, business-like, punctual in their comings and goings. They have no one with them to help face the awful machine.

Late in the afternoon come the prostate crowd. These guys are my age to twenty years older. They are jolly, chat with each other, shake hands, trade jokes. It seems a club of well to do educated buddies meeting for a card game or a drink after work. Their treatments are few and short to treat early stage prostate cancer.

There are two patients with cancer of the eye. One, a young man of Orion's age, his right eye grievously wounded. He comes alone and sits quietly awaiting his turn. After a week and a half he has begun acknowledging me with a tip of his head. The other eye cancer patient is a woman my age, most often accompanied by a friend. The patient is very serious and strong in spirit and body. She carries the cancer and her treatments like a heavy burden that she is duty bound to carry without complaint. Her husband showed yesterday and seemed resentful of his small part in this ordeal.

A man is wheeled in with an oozing wound on his neck. He looks exhausted. An old woman comes by, her head with a few bruised and wet looking wounds. She is told that they may bleed but not to worry. I do not believe she understands where she is or what is happening. She seems to have a few children who don't want to be here (who does, really).

Then there are a few women who look about 35-45. They are friendly and seem perfectly healthy except for the fact that they are having daily radiation at the business end of the 250 million dollar cyclotron.

Another patient comes in by wheelchair. He is unhappy. He wears a sporty fedora to cover his bald head. He speaks through a hole in his trachea, his hand and feet tremble. Orion's age. The difference is incredible between the two. Orion sits next to me composing a new entry in his physics blog. Serene and fit, he is the only one who shows up with a hairless pate that he has embraced as fashionable. Only people standing over him can see the terrible scar from his neuro-surgery. Only those who look closely can see the prisms affixed to the inside of glasses, designed to trick his brain into correcting the offset double vision the tumor has caused.

There are many patients coming and going but another catches my eye. Another young girl, curled in fetal position on a stretcher, her head girded by a diabolical metal structure, brought down from Ellison 18, the children's ward. When spoken to she whispers back in a tiny voice. She too is alone.

Off to the side is a children's activity room, mostly managed by a music therapist, Lorie. She is funny, attractive and has boundless energy with a sure cheer for all the kids. I love watching her work, I love hearing her music spill out into this waiting room of the wounded and damaged.

Presiding over all of this is Paul, the receptionist. He is the perfect host. He knows everyone by name, he is discreet about the reasons we are all gathered here. He is efficient. I see him scanning the room like a conductor. Is everyone here? Are they all ready to go, do they need something to drink, to snack on? Do they know about the parking discount? He is about 50, neatly dressed. His desk and walls are covered with photos of his dogs and others that patients have sent in. Tucked under a shelf is the urn apparently containing the remains of one of these beloved canines. Sort of charming, sort of not.