Waiting Room Connection

For the first week of radiation treatment, I would drive my husband to his sessions. After dropping our little one off at school, we would hurtle down the road to throw ourselves to the mercy of rush-hour traffic.

The ride was a chaotic mix of elements. Metal blasting over the speakers. Cars toying with fate and boiling emotions, zipping in and out of lanes, cutting me off. My husband, asleep for most of it. At times, I realize my inner narration of how terribly someone is driving has made it to the outside. My husband may then wake up to angrily gesture at the offending driver. Almost two hours later, we pull up to the hospital.

Radiation treatment itself is perhaps five to ten minutes. In that time I've gone through a few emails, responded to a few Epic inbox tasks on my phone, maybe scrolled through a social media app. After barely any time seems to have passed at all, I see him sauntering down the hall, cane in hand, though the cane is more a statement of what has happened so far than what he needs now. Then, we prepared for the drive back.

We were lucky to get lodging for the remaining weeks, and radiation treatment for GBM is typically 6 weeks long (five days a week over 30 sessions). I would alternate weeks I would stay with him, with the other weeks spent at home taking care of our daughter (for the intervening weeks his mother would do the same). Over several weeks, the people in the waiting room became familiar. The schedule became fleshed out in faces.

Conversations start to spread outside of the person or people accompanying the patient. Eyes meet across the room, greetings are exchanged, and connections are forged. We got to know our schedule-mates. We learned their stories, learned where they are in their journeys, met the people walking alongside them. While the waiting room so often feels like a holding pen, with magazines scattered on the side tables and coffee machines creating the illusion of rejuvenation, it was these conversations that gave it more warmth. It made sitting in those chairs, waiting under the fluorescent lights for an appointment time that had elapsed twenty minutes prior, somehow enjoyable. And when one of those patients was called for their appointment, we'd wish them well in their treatment. Once they emerged from their session, we wished them a restful day (because rest was so often what was needed).

And we will reach the end of our treatment, and some of us may ring the final bell. Others may finish on a quieter note, choosing instead to smile and wave before exiting from the radiation oncology suite. Regardless, I hope the waiting room connections we created carry each other beyond and through the rest of the road ahead.