Yesterday I had to go back to the hospital for my post-op checkup — the appointment where I’d find out if I’d healed well enough to move on to what I hope will be the final surgery of this cancer journey. If the news was good, they would reverse my bag. It’s one of the very few things I’ve allowed myself to look forward to over the past year. Looking forward to a surgery sounds morbid, I know, but that’s where my life is right now, and I think it goes a long way toward explaining why I hate the hospital.
I don’t hate the people. Far from it — they’ve saved my life, after all. But for a long time now, I haven’t been able to see that place as anything other than somewhere pain lives. I’ve kept that to myself, mostly. Attitude matters, in life and especially in something like this, so I’ve worked hard to stay positive. And besides, the sadness that seems to permeate every taupe-colored hallway of the MD Anderson complex doesn’t need me pointing it out, no matter how bright the furniture is or how shiny the slogans on the walls.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to yesterday, even with the finish line this close.
At some point during the visit, I found myself completely lost in the basement, wandering hallways I didn’t recognize, trying to find the place where I was scheduled to receive a barium enema. If you can’t understand why someone might dread a hospital visit, I’d invite you to schedule one of those for yourself and leave a Yelp review afterward. Five stars and I’d question your judgment — and suggest a different kind of hospital.
But here’s the thing about being lost and not trying very hard to be found: you start to notice things.
Maybe I’d missed them before out of self-pity. Maybe the day-to-day weight of cancer had just crowded everything else out. Or maybe I’m simply oblivious sometimes. But wandering those halls yesterday, I started to see the beauty that’s quietly everywhere in that place, if you take a moment to look past the surface.
I noticed an overworked medical resident who stopped mid-stride to help a lost stranger — just because he could see I needed it. I noticed a family tucked into a corner of the cafeteria, a parent holding an iPad so the kids could watch cartoons, doing their best to build a small, normal moment inside a place that is anything but. And then there was the barista. She was talking to the elderly woman ahead of me in line, and something made me stop and pay attention. Instead of rushing through the transaction, she was fully present — listening, really listening, to this woman who was clearly on the verge of breaking. No hollow words of comfort, no move to hurry things along. She just held her hand, and gave her a free coffee.
Small things. Simple things. But they hit me like a light coming on.
It’s remarkable how quickly something like that can pull you out of one way of seeing the world and drop you into a completely different one — a better one — almost without your permission.
I don’t know why it took me until this last visit to notice any of it. Maybe it’s because this will be my last real visit. The news yesterday was as good as it could possibly be. I healed well. The bag comes off next Thursday. The chemo port the day before. With a little luck and the grace of God, I may never have to walk those hallways again for anything more than a routine check-up.
And somehow, that’s exactly when I finally saw how beautiful that place can be. Not just the patients holding it together with everything they have, but the doctors, the staff, the people sitting quietly beside someone they love — all of it, remarkable.
I’m probably more emotional writing this tonight than I’d be on any other night. Being this close to the end will do that to you. But it felt like a story worth telling — maybe the best one to come out of yesterday.
So I’ll end with this: look for the small beauty in the places you don’t expect to find it. It might make all the difference — for you, or for someone nearby who needs it just as much.
For now, it’s late. Tugboat is snoring on the floor beside me, and I’m ready to call it a night.
Seven days and counting