The waiting room in an oncology office is a peculiar place. I make jokes when I’m uncomfortable so I think I tend to overcompensate for the nervous energy in the room and I find that I’m often the cheeriest one in the room. I think some people find it off putting as I tend to pick-up on the odd looks that people give me. “Laughter in a place like this, how insensitive” I seem to hear them thinking. And it’s mostly from those who are accompanying a cancer patient.

When we were there last Wednesday the waiting room was the fullest we had ever seen it (business is up!). Among those waiting was a family of three: a mom and dad reading some magazines, and between them their elementary school aged son. The father had thinning hair like me, and I immediately identified him as the cancer patient. It’s generally easy to tell in that room, if it’s a man they are bald or have short or thinning hair like me, if it’s a woman they’ll have a scarf or hat on. I kept looking back at that family while we waited as I was really impressed that they were all here for the appointment, especially that as a family they would bring their kid in with them. I think it’s great actually, cancer effects everyone in the family.

They called his name before they called mine and as the family got up and approached the Medical Assistant it became abundantly clear that I had made a huge mistake in my assumptions. It wasn’t his appointment, it was their son’s. And in fact it was their first appointment. He couldn’t have been more than 10 years old.

I can’t stop thinking about that family. In hindsight I can see the sadness, the stoicism that the parents were displaying in that waiting room. I can see now that they were scared but were trying to displace their nervousness. They both sat, heads down, slowly flipping through the waiting room magazines (I can’t imagine they were doing too much reading) while their son sat between them eating a small bag of chips and swinging his legs off the end of the chair.

Based on his age, chances are he has leukemia. Like lymphoma, it’s a another type of blood cancer, but one that attacks the white blood cells. And like lymphoma there is fairly high rate of survival. But still, I think of how hard it was for me to come to terms with my illness, that I can’t even imagine trying to explain that to a child. Or worse, to be a parent of a small child walking into that room. It was hard enough (and still is hard) for my own parents, and I’m almost 30.

It was certainly one of those “cancer sucks” moments (or rather, a phrase we’ve come to adopt in this house is simply “fuck cancer”). The moment when that kid identified himself as the name called in the waiting room has really stuck with me for the last two weeks. So much so that I’ve thought about it every day since.

“Are you Thomas?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“And is this your first time in?”
“Yep” he said while looking back into his bag of chips for any which he may have missed.

What’s interesting is that I find that I don’t so much worry about him. I worry about his family. More specifically his parents. I’ve really come to realize to that this experience has in many ways been harder on the people around me than it has been for myself. It can be hard to watch sometimes, not only because its hard to see people that you love go through something like this, but even more so because often times there is nothing to do BUT watch. Watch and wait.

So when I’m sitting in the waiting room, looking around everyone, I never worry about the ones with the thinning hair, or the head scarves. I worry about the people with them. Us, we’ve accepted it. We’re here to get poked and prodded and filled with poison. That’s our job. Sure it’s hard sometimes, but not as hard as being the people who come with us and support us. THAT’s hard. Because all they can do is watch. And wait.

The truth is I don’t mind. I would rather this happen to me that to have to sit and watch it happen to someone that I love. Me, I can handle it. But what I couldn’t handle would be having to watch and wait while someone that I loved went through this kind of cancer treatment, or any kind of health struggle.

I can’t imagine what that must be like.