CANCER CENTER HITMAN REVISITED, [T, 9-24-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Cancer Survivor—CANCER CENTER HITMAN REVISITED, [T, 9-24-24]

 

I mentioned in the last column, 9-22, that I was my cancer center’s “hitman,” back in my chemo days. I’ve written about it before, but if you’re new to the concept, it may sound…well, weird 

It started with Kim. Then Becky got into the act. And Jeanette. Then Everett and Rae. Wendy. Alan… well, you can see where this is going.

Following emergency surgery at midnight on my birthday, I was on a clinical trial to see if colon cancer patients needed the then-normal twelve months of chemo, or only six. Naturally, the computer put me into the twelve-month group. I was in the chemo room five days in a row, every four weeks for a year. In between, I’d have other occasions to be there, including the support group I mentioned last column. I became well acquainted with all the staff, and a lot of my fellow patients. They knew I was a preacher, used to dealing with people with problems and with problem people. Staff and support group began to see me as a resource.

Chemo is hard. Dealing with cancer is hard. It’s hard on the patient and family and…well, everybody, including the cancer center staff.

I was a captive audience, sitting there tethered to a pole. Staff members began to tell me their problems, in their own lives and with their patients. The patient problems included people who started chemo but quit early, usually without notice. Just disappeared. It would be questionably unethical for someone from the cancer center staff to pursue them. Doctors can’t go out trolling for “customers,” which is what a patient would become in that situation.

Preachers, however, go trolling for people all the time. We are even required to go…out to the highways and byways and compelling them to come in, that sort of thing. [Matthew 22:9]

And sometimes a patient is more willing to listen to a fellow-patient.

At first it was just in the chemo room itself. Some people thought that head nurse Becky and I were having an affair, because we whispered to each other a lot. But it was Becky telling me where to sit, so that I would be beside someone who was having a hard time dealing with the cancer. Then nurses and social workers and the receptionist and fellow patients would say something like, “Bob isn’t coming for treatments…” or “…to group,” etc.

In mob language, that’s a “contract” that is given to a “hitman.” I thought it fit. So did the rest of the staff and folks in the support group.

Before my treatment was over, the center decided it needed someone like me actually on staff, an “ombudsman,” if you will. The center director told me he’d like to hire me for that job, since I was doing it already anyway, but he knew I wouldn’t take it, that I couldn’t give up being a preacher. He was right.

Going back to being a preacher, though, gave me the chance to do weddings for my nurses and funerals for support group members. Those were the kind of contracts I liked taking most, the kinds of hits I liked best.

John Robert McFarland