People Hold Hands Here

Today starts my last run of EPOCH-R chemotherapy. When I first learned I had a cancer and I would be taking chemo I could not wait for this week to come. Now that it is here I’m not sure if if I’m ready for it to be over. A friend of mine who has had cancer said to me he finds comfort in chemotherapy. I now know what he is talking about. For me it took a lot to sign up for chemo. I began to have confidence in the poison and realize it is the reason I don’t have a tumor and walk with a limp. I start to think where I would be if I didn’t start and you also worry about what can and cant happen when you stop. While on chemo you take on super powers knowing there will be another round and if we don’t get it on this time we will on the next. Well there have been 5 rounds and this is the last. I won’t have a next time.

I have learned a lot over the last 5 months. There is a theory out there that folks with highly acidic diets get cancer. The flip side to those thoughts is that folks with cancer have tons of acid as a byproduct. So in an attempt at humor at MD Anderson I’m going to conclude that holding hands will give you or your loved ones cancer.

How did I come to this brilliant  conclusion?

Well you cant make it across the cancer center without seeing a few folks holding hands. You walk through the Ambulatory Treatment Center, that is where you get injected with chemo, and see a loved on holding the hand of someone getting their medicine. To the cafeteria and there are hand holders there, to the sky-bridge and there are other pairs holding hands there. So if everyone is holding hands, and everyone here has cancer then we can conclude holding hands give you cancer. Right?

Well I’m going to throw that conclusion out the window with the old dish water.
Seeing everyone hold hands is comforting. I even see my own parents do it here, and they don’t have cancer. I encourage you to do it outside of here. It might lower your stress and help you stay healthy. If holding someones hand is not comforting to you then it might be time to get a new group of folks to be around.
Don’t forget to wash.

So I start round 6 of 6 today and It sends us in to uncharted territory. It almost sets me back to the point of starting chemo. At first we didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know how my body was going to handle chemotherapy. Well now we know my body does extremely well with chemo. We know that it took care of the tumor that was in my body. We run this last round and we will start the process of wait and scan. The doctor will not use the “c” word for another 3 years.

-Derrick, I’m the one making folks smile by wearing a monster hat around MD Anderson.