The Cancer Center at University Hospital is an amazing place that can exercise your heart and mind in a way that not many places can.
I am going down with Chris who is getting his second (out of three) Cyberknife treatments. His scan showed a number of tumors along his spinal cord and instead of surgery, his doctors opted for the Cyberknife treatment. Cyberknife is a precise laser that aims radiation at the hard-to-reach places along his spine. Surgery is the last option, due to the location of the tumors.
Although this is my second visit, I am still not sure what to expect. I am positive I will not fully be prepared for who I will meet and what I will see.
Firefighters train extensively to respond to a wide variety of calls that cover the entire spectrum of what people will do or say when they are in the middle of very tough circumstances. The essential skill that a good firefighter has to quickly develop is to plan for the absolute worst, so you and your crew are prepared for every contingency. The other skill that is also very essential is to hope your training will result the best possible outcome for the people you are coming to help.
One of the calls that stays with me to this day is the "Cut Toe Guy" call. It was a beautiful spring morning, and I was up with my first cup of coffee and can hear Christopher starting breakfast in the kitchen. The plectron comes on and dispatches Engine 3 and Paramedic 4 to a patient with a cut toe.
I am already running through worst case in my head and hoping that this is a case where a Band-Aid is the extent of the patient care that morning. When we arrive at the address, I had our crew bring in Oxygen Kit, AED, Medical Kit, Backboard/Straps, and Cspine collars. We found our patient in the kitchen with no pulse, no breathing, and will a small cut on his big toe. The neighbor who was checking on the patient that morning, only saw him lying down with a cut toe.
I was thrilled that we were prepared for worst case and our patient received exceptional care until the paramedic's arrived to assume patient care. I would have been equally thrilled if a Band-Aid was the exceptional care that patient received that morning.
The skill (planning for the worst and expecting the best) makes me a giant pain in the ass in regular life. The ability to not plan for or anticipate the worst is also an amazing gift, I think in a normal life, it is called "living in the moment".
As I step into the waiting room at the Cancer Center, I realize that everyone here must get up every day and have some time in each day where they prepare for the worst. A father and son are both leaving the treatment rooms, both are bald and look completely exhausted. I assume the son is the patient, but there is no way to tell. The young son has his arms around his dad, and they are holding each other in one of the most tender embraces I have ever seen. Even today, it's hard to describe how beautiful that embrace was.
It is humbling to see people under the toughest circumstances live so fully in a moment. The difference between me and all of the people in this room is that I can take breaks from planning for the worst and these guys simply cannot. On the way to pick Chris up, I was thinking about the things that were weighing on my mind before this.
Chris gets called back and I see that puzzle on the table in the corner of the room and walk over and pull up a chair. I am staring down at the puzzle, and I hear the people all around me life changing discussions about upcoming treatments and prognoses in the most matter-of-fact way.
Worrying about fixing the deck and painting the shed seems like an amazing luxury to have in this room.
After a couple of minutes at the puzzle table, I get a tap on the shoulder and an older lady asks me if she can help me with the puzzle. I smile and I am genuinely grateful for the company. She starts talking about her garden and I realize that all of this garden talk will give us both the opportunity to just be working on a puzzle together.
As she is talking, an older man who has just checked in, comes over to the puzzle table and picks up one of the remaining puzzle pieces. He walks over, finds a seat and is smiling broadly at both of us. The lady helping me with the puzzle, looks up again at him smiles and says hi to him.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I did that?" he says, grinning away.
"Why did you do that?" I ask him
"I always wanted to put in the last piece of a puzzle" He walks back over, looks at the board and puts the puzzle piece back on the table. He laughs again and sits down looking very happy.
When we get down to the last 2 pieces and the lady stops talking, winks at me and picks up the last piece of the puzzle and walks it over to the smiling man."Really?" he said."Yes, really" she said and points down to the board.He gets up, walks over and puts the last piece in the puzzle."Thank you very much!" he has the biggest smile on his face and the receptionist calls his name and he heads towards the door. He turns around one more time and nods his head to my puzzle companion, his smile is just amazing.That one puzzle piece did not cure anyone, but it was an amazing moment of grace. For a brief moment all three of us were not in the waiting room at the Cancer Center at the University Hospital. We are finishing a hard 1000-piece puzzle.A life well lived is a collection of a lot of small moments of grace that are given and received. It is harder to receive a moment of grace than to give one to a stranger, but it is equally important that you are able to receive them.I am thinking about the visit to the Cancer Center, when I am visiting a new hospice patient for the first time. The man I am visiting is in his mid-sixties and has an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer. I am meeting John for the first time today and I am a little nervous.His wife meets me before I can ring the doorbell and tells me John is working on his painting and is looking forward to meeting me for the first time.She is telling me that he doesn't feel well enough to paint most days and that has been his passion for a lot of years. Today, he has been painting for close to an hour. I get the feeling that she wants to tell me more but stops short and invites me in the house and takes me back to his study and knocks on the door."John, Mike is here come out and meet him."John comes to the door, hands and shirt covered in different paint colors. He does not say hello but takes a long couple of minutes to look me up and down. He nods his head towards the room and motions for me to come in the room with him."Tell me what is wrong with this painting" he says and points to a giant picture of aspen trees. He is looking at me intently and looks impatient for me to answer him."The colors of the Aspen trees are wrong; the leaves look orange instead of yellow." I tell him and immediately I can see his expression change. He is smiling broadly at me."You want coffee?" he says and nods to his wife."I do" I said and smile back at him."I have been asking people for 4 months what is wrong with this painting, and you are the first one that told me the truth" John said. With his wife out of the room, he said the hardest part of what he was going through was that the people closest to him stopped treating him like a painter and more like a man that was going to die soon.Cancer, he said would eventually take everything from him and the thing he wanted to keep as long as he could was his love and passion for painting. The painting looked wrong to him, and he could not figure out what was wrong with the painting, and it was making him crazy."You helped me figure out the last piece of painting puzzle" he said and grinned even broader.A life well lived is a collection of a lot of small moments that are given and received. It is harder to receive a moment of grace than to give one to a stranger, but it is equally important that you are able to receive them and give them.I took John's bit of grace that day and was grateful that I was learning this lesson again, in a more most powerful way possible.
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Chapter 33 - Puzzle Piece
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