READING THE WAITING ROOM

Spent all day in M. D. Anderson in Houston in scan and diagnostic unit yesterday.  Young people; old people; middle-aged people.  Poor people; middle-class people; wealthy people. The big C....the great equalizer. 

Poignant, heart rending, joyful, tear jerking, laugh provoking.

I saw such tender reactions from a 30 something husband toward his wife, who was obviously very ill,  it made me cry.  A 50 something lady who'd started out six years ago with stage 4 cancer and had her thyroid, both breasts and two other organs removed and was still chuggin' along.    A family of about nine people from at least three generations supported their matriarch of the family with such humor and love it made me happy, because she was happy.  And then there was the omigosh coincidental moment when we started talking to a couple and found out that the husband had the same kind of cancer Jim has (only 2500 diagnosed in the US yearly) and that it had been found the same way Jim's had (an intestinal blockage)....and that they lived in the same town my daddy grew up in....Groesbeck, TX.   :-)....and that they knew all the Ellises (my maiden name was Ellis).  I took a book and didn't read one page.  :-)  Instead I read the waiting room.