January 8, 2024
On alternating Fridays I usually visit the cancer unit at the hospital. It was my home-away-from-home for three months in 2022, after I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
Now that I’m out, and healthy-looking (not to be confused with healthy), I go back to see the inmates.
My role is to spread joy and happiness in the cancer ward.
Tough sell.
Friday’s visit was not bad. I saw three men, ages about 80, 60 and 30. The young guy had his pregnant wife (I presume) with him.
Three-to-four patient visits is about my capacity for a Friday afternoon.
The maladies today were, as expected, versions of cancer: An AML (like mine) an ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia), and I didn’t catch what the other one was.
The ALL case, about which disease I know very little, is apparently too many white blood cells. My AML case is too few; this guy’s problem was too many.
In ALL, there is an explosion of healthy whites which, unleased from the bone marrow, destroy everything in their path, like the locust horde attacking the Pharoah’s kingdom in Exodus. Think Agent Orange, loose in the jungle, leaving nothing but destruction in its path.
In the case of each patient today, I was able to offer a complimentary copy of Alligator Wrestling in the Cancer Ward.
One never really knows what to say during a patient visit.
I don’t know; they don’t know.
The book offers focus to the conversation. Maybe it is a welcome relief from discussing bone marrow, platelet counts, cafeteria food and catheter awkwardness.
Will they read it? Who knows? Maybe the war stories; maybe more.
In a perfect world, they would read it, be motivated to pray, and pass the book along to another sufferer or care-giver.
I was able to hand these out because of your generosity.
There were 10 books on the shelf in the reading room near the nurse station when I left today. Two weeks ago I had parked 15 books on that shelf, alongside the “Free Take One” card.
I handed out three today.
That means two others had walked away since my last visit.
Which in turn means that in two weeks we distributed 5 books to cancer patients or caregivers. (Or maybe someone simply ripped off two copies for fire-starter. Unlikely.)
So: In a month we will distribute 10 books, just in that Cancer Unit.
Here is THE ASK: You have an opportunity to provide books for distribution.
While the message of Alligator Wrestling in the Cancer Ward has great value (else I would not have written it), the physical paperback gives me, and others, the chance to connect with a patient and a family.
The free book is a door opener.
I know the nurses use it, because often, as was the case Friday, a patient first meeting me will say: “Oh yeah, you’re the author. I’ve heard about you.”
(I always tell them whatever they’ve heard is not true. Even the good parts. Maybe especially the good parts.)
To provide books for distribution, go to my website directing you to the Ascension Via Christi Foundation page. There, you can purchase signed copies for cancer patients.
Order as many as you like. Via Christi will find a place for them. Your gift is tax deductible.
Order copies here.
And yes, I gain some profit from your generosity. Thank you.
This year, two million Americans will be diagnosed with some form of cancer. In virtually every case, the news will come as a surprise.
Many of you have heard the diagnosis, as I have.
It is perplexing.
Disorienting.
Terrifying.
What the patient needs to hear is some version of this truth:
We do not always get to choose the trials we face, only how we face them.
Many thanks to you for making the Friday cancer ward visits productive.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9
Curt
What I found in the cancer ward last week