Connections on the cancer ward are Inevitable, but fear of loss can make those relationships painful.
PUBLISHED April 17, 2018
A native New Yorker, Shira Kallus Zwebner is a communications consultant and writer living with her husband and three children in Jerusalem, Israel. Diagnosed in 2017 with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, she's fighting her cancer battle and blogging about the journey at hipstermomblog.com
As I walk through the metal detector at the entrance to Shaare Tzedek Medical Center, I find myself humming the popular song from Sesame Street.Who are the people in your neighborhood? They're the people that you meet each day!
Since starting on my cancer journey last November, the walls and halls of the hospital where I'm getting treated has become my new neighborhood. Sometimes, I feel like I spend all of my time within this facility, and the myriads of people I've met have become my new friends and neighbors.
It's an eclectic group of people, from staff members to patients. Yair, who I've dubbed Mr. Motorcycle, was my technician during my repeat PET/CT after round three of R-CHOP. He entered the room wearing a leather jacket and sandals, with a black motorcycle helmet tucked neatly under one arm. While preparing to inject the radioactive materials into my arm, the strains of Evanescence, a rock band from the late 1990s played as his ring tone. I knew we could have been really good friends when he referred to the reinforced cement room where I was to spend an hour in isolation drinking cup after cup of disgusting liquid, as “the Pub.”
No comments:
Post a Comment