Cancer Journal #39 June 20

 My wife and I went to the Thirsty Badger last night to see live music at their outdoor stage.   I saw a rough looking fellow come in with a shirt that read "F*ck Cancer."  In place of the vowel was a skull and crossbones.  Maybe a shave and hair trim would have cleaned him up but there was a bad gaunt about him suggesting the ravishes of cancer.  That and the legend on the shirt told to me that we belonged to the same club.

I went over the the table he and his group were at and said to him, "I'm betting you have cancer."  "Not no more, I don't," he responded and proceeded to tell me about an operation they did to take skin from his forearm and graft it onto his tongue along with some other stuff that called for a 14 hour operation.  They must have removed some bone too because there were some things missing in that head that surely had been there before.  He showed me where the skin graft had come from and it totally messed up a tattoo that had been there.  I wondered if his tongue had the remainder of the tattoo on it but I didn't ask to look.  His speech was impaired but not so you couldn't make out what he was saying. 

 Somewhere in the whole deal, I told him of my diagnosis.  The gal sitting by him, I suppose his girlfriend, gave me one of those message bracelets so common these days.  This one said "Cancer Sux."  I put it on and left it on the rest of the evening.  He and I grasped each other's hand in a show of solidarity against our common enemy.  I had approached the table thinking maybe to pray with him.  His report that he was cancer free scotched that plan.  Besides, the table he was at did not seem to have praying kind of people--not that that should have stopped me.  

His chipper announcement that he was done with cancer suggested that he has the good attitude piece for defeating cancer nailed.  It may have been a couple of beers out with his friends at live music on a nice summer night talking.  But he sounded confident enough that I wasn't about to say, "Well, just in case it comes back..."  But I do wonder.  Cancer has its way.  I will pray for him for permanent remission.

I was touched by getting the bracelet even though I generally don't like phonetically misspelling words.  Besides, I have no reason to register disgust at the wickedness of cancer--not yet anyway.  Even if things were to go south, it's not quite what I would want to say to the world about my condition.  I most likely will leave it on my desk or some place.  As a token of club membership.  I won't throw it away.  


Addendum four or five hours later:  Since I said I would pray for the man's permanent remission, I sort of felt that I had to.  I doubt that I would have if I had not made that announcement.  Anyway, I've prayed for him a couple of times and there was a kind of involuntary intensity to my praying.  The praying was voluntary, but if I pray I cannot be anything but intense.  That doesn't happen all the time (see blog #22).   Just thought I would pass on. 

Comments

  1. Jan CJune 21, 2021 at 12:13 PM

    Glad you were able to have that moment of connection with him and his girlfriend. Sweet of her to give you the bracelet (though I am not fond of words re-spelled like that either).

    ReplyDelete
  2. charlieschaeferJune 22, 2021 at 10:08 AM

    For me, it's important that those connections trump personal preferences that are mostly a matter of taste. Raise the flag of bad taste high if it means celebrating the tie with someone very much unlike you with whom you share the diagnosis.

    ReplyDelete

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