Member-only story
Featured
God and Cancer: The Conversation I Never Wanted to Have
What happens when real life no longer fits the religious answers you were given?
Today, I sat next to my wife for six hours while chemotherapy drugs dripped slowly into her body.
The infusion clinic is a strange place. It is basically one large room with six recliner chairs arranged so that everybody quietly faces each other while poison enters their veins in the hope that it might also keep them alive.
There is something confronting about that.
Nobody really talks much. Occasionally, a nurse moves between chairs, checking blood pressure, adjusting drips, or replacing bags of medication. Machines beep. People stare at phones, books, walls, or nothing at all. Every person in that room is carrying a story they never wanted.
Today, everybody there was old. Mostly people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties.
My wife was the youngest by miles.
A few weeks ago, we were told she has now exhausted all surgical options. There will be no operation to “fix” this. There is no final breakthrough surgery waiting around the corner.
This is palliative chemotherapy.
