WHAT’S ANOTHER WAY TO SAY BARF? [M, 3-6-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHAT’S ANOTHER WAY TO SAY BARF? [M, 3-6-23]

 

I’ve written about this before, but I’m thinking about it again, because today marks my 33^rd anniversary of starting chemo.

After emergency colon surgery on my birthday revealed a malignant tumor, my first oncologist said, “a year, or two.” My cancer survivor friend, Rose Mary Shepherd, said, “You’ve got to see my oncologist. They call him ‘Dr. Cancer.’” Alan Hatfield told me, “There’s a clinical trial we can get you on, but you have to start the chemo within 30 days of your surgery, and today is your 30^th day…”

It was Helen’s birthday. We began to dread special days.

As time went by, some folks in the cancer treatment room suspected that head nurse Becky and I were having an affair, because we did a lot of conspiratorial whispering. An affair was reasonable as an explanation for the whispering, because she was pretty and I was needy, and for a man, that’s all that’s necessary,

It's hard to have an affair, though, with someone who makes you throw up every time you see her.

I’d walk into the chemo room, and there would be Becky, looking all pretty in her white dress, and it just made me want to puke! So I did. I ran to the bathroom and called Ralph on the big white phone. It’s “anticipatory nausea.” Becky had not done anything to me yet, but I knew she was going to give me stuff that would make me hurl. I just went ahead and got it out of the way. It’s a very efficient system.

[One of the side effects of chemo is learning a lot of different ways to say vomit.]

The stories of anticipatory chemo nausea are legion. One was even quite local. Marie Deschamps was a former nurse in my center who had become the administrator. A classier or more elegant woman you’ll never see. One day she was shopping in a super market. She went around a corner, and came face to face with a woman who promptly lost her lunch all over poor Marie. Yes, a former patient.

Even worse is the story of the oncologist on vacation in Paris. As he walked down the street, a woman a block ahead suddenly ran to the curb and upchucked. He went to see if he could help. When he got closer, he recognized her. Yep, former patient. Years later, in a foreign country, but that anticipatory nausea part of her brain was still sharp. She couldn’t stomach the sight of him.

The odd thing is that these people who make us bring it up for a vote are the very ones who help us get well

Becky and I were whispering because I was the cancer center hitman. After I had tossed my cookies at the sight of her, she would whisper to me if she wanted me in the back room that day, because of some other patient who was there, or wanted me sitting beside a particular patient in the main room, or if she wanted me to talk to a parent, or slip me an address so I could go to the highways and byways to drag in some patient who had dropped out of treatment. We had to whisper because we were probably breaking all sorts of professional standards and privacy laws.

As my treatment came to a close, Becky accepted a marriage proposal. She asked me to perform the ceremony. I was pleased. It was a wonderful honor. But I told her, “Don’t wear a white dress.”

John Robert McFarland

Becky was not the only one. Happy Birthday to the woman who says that I surely amassed some sort of record for a preacher who did weddings for his chemo nurses.