'been there

A foreign body in my eye took me to the Ophthalmologist at Kaiser. The eye doctor is in the same building, only one level below the Oncology Department which is in the 8th floor. There is only one hallway that served passage to four elevators so you’ll get to stand in this hallway or ride the elevators with patients going to oncology or to the other floors in the building.

Oncology patients are easy to spot, they usually wear hats, nice earrings, as in the case of female patients, looked pale, and had this sadness in their eyes. Sadness, that only those in the same situation or had experience the same, could decipher. The people who were getting chemotherapy in the 8th floor, I rode the elevator with them last Thursday. A ride that took me back in time. I’ve been there…

That 8th floor had been an important part of my life. I am in mixed emotions whenever I recall the years I spent there as an out-patient. I’m happy recalling the friendships I made with the nurses, the staff, and my doctor, who then reached time for retirement and transferred my care to a younger colleague, but there was also a pinch of pain I feel in my arms and hands whenever the needle pokes of the treatment and the blood works, comes to my mind.

Visiting this floor for two years allowed me to experience how holidays were observed (I used observed because it is more appropriate than “celebrate,” at least when you are in this floor) in a fragile environment filled with people in pain or suffering. I saw them change decors from Halloween, to Thanksgiving, then to Christmas, occasions which healthy people look forward to, but is just an ordinary day, perhaps another lonely day, for people hooked to chemo machines and tied in bed. I was once one of them and this experience is stacked in my head, but it was temporary.

I wanted to reach-out to the people I rode the elevator with last Thursday and tell them that better days are coming their way soon. I wanted to erase and clear the sadness in their eyes, just like how the eye drops cleared the foreign body in my eye.