Getting on the cancer train

Sometimes when I am at SCCA I can feel people looking at me as though I'm being assessed. Wondering, perhaps, why I am there? After all, I am neither "young" or "old;" I appear healthy and I have my hair (well for today anyway). Maybe they are thinking I am with someone... always waiting for them. But then I get called back. Yes! I really am the patient.

I walk out of the lab with a big bandage on my chest, declaring, "yes! I have a port and I'm getting an infusion!" I realize that having cancer puts me in the cancer club, but sometimes I feel like I'm looking through the window of the train car and not being invited in. Maybe when I show up next week with a scarf on my head, I'll be on that train too.

This whole "cancer thing" seems so surreal sometimes. It's not really my style, to be the center of so much attention. That's something I usually avoid. When I got married, we went to the courthouse. No walking down an aisle with everybody staring at me. No thanks. When I got divorced, we did it through the mail. No court appearances, no talking to a judge. None of that. It took me 8 months to have a reception. Well part of that was the weather, but it's just not my thing. I like being in the background, greasing the wheels, running the operation for others. Making things happen behind the scenes and never having my name come up. But now, now it's the opposite. I'm poked and prodded and the object of extremely focused attention by nurses and doctors and techs. I still somehow feel that if I just stopped everything that no one would notice.. I could slip back into the oblivion of my life. It's tempting to try it.. just to see.

Maybe I don't want to get on the train after all. I'll just sit here with my headphones on and my face in a book, trying to blend into the surroundings.