As Good as it Gets

I just got off the phone after talking with my mother. She’s 93 and lives alone in Clearwater, on the other coast of Florida. I call her every day because we love each other and I don’t want, ever, to have to think I missed an opportunity to speak with her.

I told her the news. I had to shout a bit because she’s very hard of hearing, but, after a couple of tries, she understood. My visit with the oncologist this morning went about as well as could be expected. The main tumor, the big one in my right lung, has grown, but only slightly. I go back on chemotherapy in a few days, for a short course with chemical recipe that, I was told, isn’t particularly virulent.

My mom was pleased by the news. So was my wife when I called her from the hospital. My friends will be relieved, I know, when they hear I’m not out of the fight.

It takes me about twenty minutes to get from my house to the VA hospital, driving north on Interstate 95, one of the busiest highways in the country. It’s rare to drive on I-95, no matter the time of day, and not get stuck in some sort of traffic jam.

Today was no exception.

I’m not a very patient driver. I’ve been known to grumble when I’m behind the wheel. Once or twice, I’ve indicated my displeasure with a hand gesture that, I think, is understood in almost any culture.

So, there I was this morning, on my way to have a conversation with a doctor about some vile thing that’s eating me alive from the inside and I was getting angry because… I wasn’t going fast enough!

How crazy is that? How off-the-map senseless is it to be in a hurry to get to a cancer ward? I had to laugh.

So I slowed down and I made it in plenty of time to have blood sucked from my veins and then to hear the news.

On the way home, I didn’t get angry. Instead, I thought of my wife and my mother and of all the people who will be pleased by the news that though the cancer has grown, I am still in the fight. There are a lot of people like that in my life and that’s a blessing. It really is.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to suddenly turn into some saint on the superhighway. I’m not that kind of guy. What I’ll try to do, though, is remember how blessed I am to be able to hear relief in my wife’s voice, and to have the opportunity to call my mother another twenty times or maybe a hundred and twenty times or more than that. I’m blessed to have friends who care – there are a lot of people who don’t. I’m blessed to be able to get stuck in a traffic jam and blessed to be able write these words.