My Driving Force

Exposed, hurting, lying on what seems like a narrow mortician's table in a cavernous room, alone, encapsulated by an enormous machine shooting me with targeted radiation all in the name of cancer -- I am a science experiment. Technicians come and go, twisting and adjusting my body, laying a heavy gelatinous slab over the scar where my breast used to be, asking if I am OK....I'm not. Every day. It exhausts me. I think I am strong, and yet when the all clear is given and it's time to rise off the table, to leave my torture chamber, it feels exactly like trying to run away from a monster in a dream. My legs want to move but walking is slow and labored. I'm spent. Even though I have been technically released from the shackles of treatment, the heavy chains have really been piled in my arms, handed to me to carry until the next day, when I will be locked to the table once again. Day after day. Week after week. I hate radiation.

Friends drive me to and from the treatments. They sit in the small waiting area and do just that -- wait. Yesterday, my driver was my neighbor and her precious four year old daughter. The four year old asked me how it was when I was finished with treatment. I told her that it was not fun, but that the doctor said it was medicine that I had to take, and that it makes me cry, and she said that she had a flu shot. Empathy -- so sweet. "And did it make you cry?" I ask. "Yes, I did not like it." "But was your mom there to hold your hand?" (To which mom said, "I was there to hold her whole body.") "Yes," she said. "And you know that she loves you, right?" "Yes." "That's what it's like to have friends like you drive me to the doctor and wait for me and drive me home afterwards. It's like the love you feel when your mom holds your hand when you are scared but have to take your medicine anyway, like your flu shot. I feel your love for me and it comforts me. So, thank you for taking me to the doctor today. You helped me take my medicine just by going with me and waiting for me."

The entrance to my torture chamber