Thinking that tomorrow marks the halfway point through six weeks of daily radiation treatments, I walked into the hospital late this afternoon, looking around me like I always do, down the long hallways of the radiation wing.
Elvis Costello’s song “Everyday I Write the Book” was running through my mind, and I could actually feel the sound of the groovin’ piano accompaniment in my fingertips, some of which are still numb and tingling from surgery and months of chemotherapy.
For all the years that I have loved that song, I’ve never really known all the lyrics. So, I thought about the title while I walked past people on rolling hospital beds, vulnerable-looking lumps with hospital socks sticking out the bottom of rumpled hospital blankets.
Everyday for the last three weeks I have come to the hospital. Everyday I am reminded of how, only a few months ago, I was one of those lumps in pathetic nubby hospital socks. The day of my surgery I was also in the hallway on a rolling hospital bed, waiting for a procedure in the radiation department. I had to wear one of those sheer, poofy head coverings over my bald head. I was so scared, but still, somehow, peaceful.
Everyday I come here and go through all those emotions again, from beginning to end, as I see all the people on beds, waiting in the hospital corridors, looking so ragged and so alone.
I went through the double doors into the radiation oncology wing, changed into a soft hospital gown and put my jewelry, blouse, watch and purse in a little locker. Hugging the gown around my bare torso (do those strangely-placed ties ever close the gown to anyone’s satisfaction?) I headed to the treatment room where the kind nurses and technicians were waiting to radiate the site where the cancer used to be.
As I laid down on the table, watching red laser beams criss-crossing my body to help line up the beams of radiation, I thought: Everyday I write the book.