A nice chat in the infusion room with a woman whose daughter had accompanied her to pick up a continuous chemo system. She was going to get a fanny pack to hold the drugs which would be administered through her port while she went about her daily business, getting the chemo 24/7 for several days. However, there had been a glitch and the system wasn't ready.
She and her daughter seemed upbeat and friendly, and we exchanged the usual what-are-you-here-fors. She has esophageal cancer. Most of the time, though, we talked about Scrabble. She was clearly a good player, knowing about qi and wiz, looking over Jerry's shoulder and spotting good plays, so we agreed that if our schedules ever lined up it would be fun to play together.
As time went by, though, she got more and more annoyed at having to wait. Finally I overheard her saying to her daughter, "Well, it looks like we'll have time to go out for a cigarette," and they got up and left. They came back rather quickly, probably after they found out that Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a non-smoking campus and they'd have to walk a fair distance to get to where they could smoke.
So.... am I totally bigoted in being horrified that someone on chemotherapy for esophageal cancer is still smoking? I found myself emotionally pulling away from this very nice woman just because of that. On the one hand, who am I to judge anyone else? On the other, how can she?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Hi Lucie!
The first time I went to get my kids at school, I was just dumdfounded to see all the nannies smoking in front of the school w/ all the babies and kids they take care of around them. It's insane! Who would give their kids all day, everyday to someone who smokes, and pay her for it??
And yes, I'm being judgemental, lol:)
Thinking of you.
And I meant, PS:"thinking of you" and not as in "thinking of you being judgemental", LOL;)
Perhaps if you see her again, you could mention your surprise that she is still smoking, and see what she says--I've tried to quit 15 times and I can't, or, my doc says esophageal cancer isn't strongly correlated with smoking (more on that later), or whatever. I'm VERY judgmental, and sometimes I change my mind after I hear someone's story--and sometimes I don't.
Post a Comment