__________________________________
A New Team Sport
By Stephanie Kemp








Nov 30, 2024

Huntington Hospital, W650

I will never be able to explain this week.

So for once, I am not going to try (that hard).

I have never been so grateful for the kindness of people or the strength of my body.  Every time I am sad or scared or twisted in cords (that was only at the beginning), an astounding human being bounds into the room as if on a magic mind meld call to physically or emotionally uncoil me, and every time I worry about my vitals flagging, they come through.

My walks have saved me (of course) and each time I do a loop on this cancer floor I am reminded of how connected we are as people. Some patients are working to live, some are preparing to leave. I hear every human sound you can imagine through half closed doors and curtains. Bravery and Kindness and Tears and Family (both given and chosen)…Laughter.

I hear hushed hallway phone calls and try to decipher remnants of shared take out in greasy boxes.

I catch slivers of TVs on with no sound, through doors meant to be closed.

I see people staring out over tree tops through double paned glass at a hopeful blue sky or a neverending blanket of black.

I hold my chemo roller like a ski pole, reminding myself that I am athletic, even though I never really liked skiing….or being cold.

Part of me feels like a patient, part of me feels like a spy.  All of me is present.

I hear my mom’s end of life cough (and my mom’s all of life kindness) from a bed I can’t see, as an unseen woman on a similar journey tries to make her nurse feel better for having to roll her body over onto a bone or a joint or a some other body part in deep pain.

I keep walking.
10 loops is a mile.

I am happy when I circle back after Loop 7 to hear the woman and her nurse talking about grandkids.  

I hear my dad’s voice, still hoping 17 years later, that his feet were warm enough and wishing I’d thought to bring him a pair of thick socks or ask for an extra (extra) blanket.

I wonder what his last words were.

11 more loops. 3.6 miles in all today (so far).

I have gotten to know my nurses and my team and can’t believe how much I have come to care for all of them…..(except that of course I can). Their lives and families and choices and circumstances and histories. I will forever hold onto my little book of notes and dreams and kindnesses they wrote to me.  It’s strange to think that a tiny purple notebook could become, in five days, one of my life’s most important artifacts. I would (and will) take it with me if there was a fire.

They call me #50. It was explained to me on my second night here that sometimes nurses refer to patients by room number because it can be so hard to get attached to people by name. People that will leave (in some way, no matter what), to be replaced after a room cleaning.

I would be a terrible nurse. I would probably cry all over everyone or try to write them a million poems as I put extra blankets on them without even asking if they wanted one.

I will be #50 forever, no matter who else I may (also) become and wherever else I may go, even if that means coming back here someday, to friends old and new, in a different room.

I have inadvertently joined a club.

But for now, I get to go home tonight or tomorrow.  

Either one is fine. I’m in no rush. (This is no small statement after five days of 24/7 Red Devil / R-EPOCH Chemo dripping into my chest port during the entire week of Thanksgiving.)

That’s how grateful I am.

And lucky.

Even though I still hate clubs…

______________________________________


Ps.  I will be back one day no matter what, with tiny cookies (too much sugar is dangerous!), hard to describe homesickness (homesick? …for a hospital?), and eternal thanks (thanks can be eternal, you know…) for the people we get to know on this journey we get to take, through this life we get to live…especially if we don’t take anything -  or anyone, including ourselves and especially nurses - for granted.


cc: Papa and gM…. I can’t wait to eat potato chips with you forever.

      Duckies - even though I haven’t even met you yet.