For the past 33 months I have visited the 5th floor of the Duke Cancer Center faithfully to check my blood counts and discuss treatments for my leukemia. With that much interaction, you develop a relationship with the nurses and administrators. They have a difficult job, caring for cancer patients, many of whom they can see their future but are not supposed to recognize it. Their job is to keep hope alive and well in the hearts and minds of patients and their families, and that is an awesome responsibility that dovetails with the doctors medical protocols which together make ups the circle of care for cancer patients.
Our nurse is a wonderful woman who has been around the block a few times as evidenced by her willing smile and always positive attitude.
This one morning we were chit chatting about life, my kiddos, the chemotherapy regimens I am on and various and sundry other topics when I had to stop mid conversation and apologize for being so forgetful with so many of my words. She looked at me with compassion and smiled and shared, "Scott, its not the leukemia, because I find myself at a complete loss for words mid sentence nearly every day." And she told me the story of her visit with her sister just the last weekend when she was describing what it was like to be in Florida and how prevalent these little green lizard like animals were… and she looked at me as if I knew what she was talking about. She continued that it took her 5 minutes to describe these animals, little alligators, oversized salamanders… but she couldn’t remember their exact name. We were hand gesturing and motioning along the ground, but couldn’t remember the name of this reptile.
We were laughing with each other and at each other, feeling stricken by the same neuro mental shortcoming.
When suddenly she blurted out IGUANAS.
We laughed harder.
Fact of the matter is I don’t even second guess myself or even try too hard anymore to come up with the missing word in so many of my sentences. I chalk it up to old age, my wife says its from concussions from 21 years of tackle football and my palliative care specialist suggests that the chemo therapy medicine actually damages parts of the brain that we aren’t even aware of yet. So, there are lots of possible reasons, and I don’t really care which one is most culpable for my forgetfulness because I have chosen to spend whatever precious mental and physical energy I have on things that I can control over and things that have more long term meaning and significance.
Don’t sweat the rabbits when hunting elephants. Or simply put, its ok to say "iguanas" when that is the only word that comes to mind. Those close to us will know what you mean, and that’s really all that matters.
Amen and Amen.