The Waiting Room
Waiting for a loved one while they are having cancer treatments is such a trying experience. All attention, prayers, etc tend to be all on the cancer patient. Nobody sees the one who bears the brunt of it all.
I finish my daily journaling and open my phone to play a game of Sudoku as I sit alone waiting for Tom. This has become our routine for the last six weeks. Twice a day we drive the short block from our room at The Hope Lodge to the Cancer Building of the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona so Tom can have a proton beam radiation treatment.
Tom is in the back completing treatment number 60, his final treatment. Joe and Suzy walk in for Joe’s daily treatment as I am about to solve the sudoku puzzle and we say our hellos. Suzy says to me “Is today the day?” I answered her, “Yes! Finally, the last treatment is upon us!”
Joe asks me if I am happy to be heading home. I have missed home so bad, we drove almost 700 miles from our home in Utah to stay in Phoenix for two months so Tom could have the life-saving proton radiation treatments. I fell in love with Phoenix but am so homesick I can’t wait to get home. Our stay at the Mayo Clinic has been so long and yet such a short adventure.
