Hauling Hay

It's 11:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, and I'm back in my favorite (and my brother Wilson's favorite) blue reclining chair, waiting for my Fludarabine to come from the pharmacy.

On the parking garage elevator this morning, coming up from the bowels of parking level 9 (where dwarves toil in the corners looking for jewels and precious metals), I met a harried young mother and her precious daughter--maybe four years old. The mom had scored a parking place on level 5, and was trying to manuever her daughter's stroller into the elevator. I held the door ('cause Mom raised me that way) and helped them in. The daughter was lovely, dressed all in pink, with what I think is blond hair. I say "what I think" because her hair wasn't really there. I didn't ask her mom about her condition, but was pretty sure I could guess. My guess was confirmed when they rode the hospital elevator to the fifth floor, home of the general oncology department. That's why I can't complain. Under the "God Forbid" category, ask me if I'd rather have this disease or have Robbie have this disease. I'll pray for that mother and that child tonight.

Yesterday, on the seventh floor, I had a delightful conversation with a man--call him Alan--with lung cancer. It has been my experience that people in here for treatment are either very outgoing or very insular. Alan was tremendously outgoing. The son of Northern Maryland minister, he is 57 years old, has a graduate degree from an unmentioned educational institution, and came out of grad school to work for many years as a carpenter. He has a small but aggressive tumor that seems to be responding well to chemo. It seems the aggressive cells, the fast movers, sacrifice protection for speed--much like the Mitsubishi Zero fighter of WWII. As a result, they are very open to attack.

Alan was raised in dairy country, and says he still marvels thinking back to his days when he helped neighbors bring in the hay. Watching from the back of the hay wagon as the people on the ground ran in the hot sun from bale to bale, throwing the 90 pound bales up to where he waited to stack them on the cart, stopping only when the wagon was full, and stopping only until the tractor reached the barn. Then off the cart and back to throwing bales. Alan said that thinking back on this non-stop machine-like performance still leaves him in awe. I told him that I could relate.

I think sometimes (and have probably related in a previous post) that growing up on a farm in some ways prepared me for the battle in which I am currently engaged. Look--if you are gazing out over three different fields, covered by a couple of thousand bales, knowing the temperature and the humidity are both going to break the 95 mark, it can be downright overwhelming. So you learn not to look at the whole field. You look at the next bale. You pick it, you throw it on the cart, you roll up your sleeves (for the city folk, only a fool hauls hay in anything but long pants and long sleeves) and brush off any fire ants that you picked up, then run to the next available bale. You do this until the wagon is full or there are no more bales. There's a break for lunch. There's a break for dinner. There's a break each time you ride the wagon to or from the barn. Other than that, you work. Sometimes we hauled hay until eleven o'clock at night, gathering "straggler" bales by the headlights of the tractor, with hands so sore you had to lift the bales onto the back of the wagon by your fingertips. But eventually, you finished.

I'm viewing my ongoing chemotherapy this way. I don't worry about the end state. I focus on the next treatment, the next thermometer reading, the next set of pills. I have faith that some day someone will say "You're in remission". Hauling hay got me ready for this. And I always wondered, "What good is this going to do me?" Who knew?