PVCC Puma Press: November 2004

Nine times out of 10, we all take trips for the benefit of relaxation or adventure. We take a vacation because it’s a vacation! We take time off so we can have a good time. But every once in a while, we take a trip because we have to.

It’s not the kind of trip you take because of your own selfish need to have a great trip to some fabulous place you’ve been dying to see. It’s the kind of trip you take for the sake of someone who needs you. This kind of trip is the one where you go because you can’t imagine being anywhere else. My most dreaded trip was to Stanford Medical Center in Stanford, California to be with my best friend April, a leukemia patient. The hardest two weeks of my life were the time between the day she was diagnosed and the night of Thanksgiving when I finally set foot in Stanford Hospital. Once there, I was relieved that I could do my job, which is the job of all those with loved ones who have cancer; the job of just being there. It’s a job that’s hard to do from out-of-state, and so you take the trip.

When someone you love has cancer, you’ll do anything for them. The trip to be with a sick loved one is one you take at the last minute, so you just have to suck it up and pay the airfare. I actually found a good deal right away on America West.

For $195, I could fly from Phoenix to San Jose and back, leaving on Friday and returning Monday. But then I came down with a throat infection and had to cancel the flight. You can’t get near a leukemia patient if you have so much as a sniffle.

I found the best deal again with America West, flying out Thanksgiving evening and coming back the following Monday in the middle of the day. It was an extra $212, putting my airfare grand total up at $407, which is not something you give up easily when unemployed. But you do what you have to do.

When I walked into Stanford Hospital on Thanksgiving evening, the unseen culture of the families of patients wasn’t visible. At first glance, Stanford is patients, doctors, nurses, residents, and interns. What quietly paces the halls, what sleeps on the couches at night, and what temporarily calls Stanford “home” is a culture of worried families.

The families come from as far away as Germany, Portugal, and Russia. I’m sure what they paid for their airfare makes my $407 look like pennies thrown into a fountain. It doesn’t matter how far away we came from, we all came to the same place for the same reason; when someone you love has cancer, you’ll do anything to be with them.

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The hardest two weeks of my life were between the day my best friend was diagnosed with leukemia and the night of Thanksgiving
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Thanksgiving evening, April, her fiancé Robert, and I spent quietly watching TV in her hospital room. When it was time to call it a night, Robert and I agreed he would sleep on the air mattress in her room, and I would take a couch in the waiting area.

I grabbed a blanket and pillow and he showed me to the waiting room. The Russian family was in there having one hell of a party. Their loved one must have been having a good day at the Peterson Center for Cancer Research because it sounded like a celebration. Robert and I moved on to find a large, red leather couch for me in the atrium.

That’s where I slept for most of the night. As I was drifting off to sleep, a couple was bedding down on a couch across from mine. The first time I woke up, they were gone. An older Asian woman had replaced them on the couch. The second time I awoke, every couch and chair around me was full. It was like a slumber party!

I awoke a few other times that night because the atrium was noisy, being right off of the main lobby. A couple hours before dawn, I walked in my socks to the waiting room where the Russians had been partying hours earlier.

I didn’t want to wear my shoes because I didn’t want to make noise. I wasn’t even through my first night, but I already understood the unsaid etiquette of being a visitor there. Sleep was so precious when you could get it, you hated to be woken up, and you’d hate to wake up another person.

I peeked into the dark waiting room, saw an open couch and went back to the atrium to retrieve my blanket, shoes and pillow. The dark, quiet room was so inviting. When I got there and tip-toed in, I realized the couch I’d thought was empty actually had some blankets on it, so I turned to sneak back out. A man on the other couch woke up and cleared it for me, saying in broken English his wife had gone back to the room.

I felt so bad for waking him up, but he was welcoming me. The sun rose, and I could make out the shapes in the room. One man had chosen the floor, another had made a bed out of chairs all lined up in a row. As the sun got brighter, someone got up to close the blinds.

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Home, I’ve come to realize, is the place where you are when you’d rather not be anywhere else.
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The man’s wife came in with their daughter just before eight o’clock. The daughter kissed the man sleeping on the floor, and I realized that they were married. This was an entire family, from a foreign country, who had all come to America together for the best cancer treatment for their loved one.

They all lived at the hospital, eating their meals there, showering there, and sleeping there just as I was doing. They had left laptops and cell phones charging all over the waiting room. There was no fear of anything getting stolen. That’s the kind of understanding we had. Everyone was above and beyond respectful of everyone else around them.

The families and I shared knowing glances and looks of compassion in the halls. It’s as far as we got because of the language barrier and because we were busy making sure our loved ones had every comfort we could give them.
I rarely left April’s room at all. When I left, it was to go to the cafeteria to eat, use the restroom or to go to the tub room to shower. I did leave to walk to the wonderful Stanford Shopping Center once, but only because Robert was there to stay with April.

I checked out Bloomingdale’s, bought Stanford University t-shirts at the Stanford Shop, and debated getting a double conpana at the Palo Alto Coffee Roasting Company.

(If you ever find yourself at the Stanford Shopping Center, this is a coffee drink not to be missed! But I missed it so I could spend more time with April rather than standing in line for coffee).

Before walking back to the hospital, I picked up some sandwiches from Andronico’s market, which has had fantastic food for decades. My mother used to shop there before I was born. And by the way, this wasn’t the first time I’d spent the night at Stanford Hospital; I was born there in 1979. In many ways, I felt I was home.

The day after Thanksgiving, April received transfusions of blood, plasma and platelets. She had a bad reaction to these and asked me if she looked like she was breaking out in hives. I approached her bedside, told her she most certainly was and we paged her nurse. The next few minutes were a blur when April realized she couldn’t breathe.

I was never more scared in my life as I watched April struggle for air. Once the nurses did their magic and the crisis was past, I spent the next two hours watching her as she slept.

I watched her chest slowly move up and down as she breathed in and out. It was at that moment that I realized I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I needed no further instructions on how to figure out the meaning of life. This was what it was all about, and there was no place else I would have rather been at that moment.

It didn’t matter to me at all that I was sleeping on couches among strangers or showering in the hospital tub room or eating hospital cafeteria food. It didn’t make a difference that I was unemployed and spending hundreds of dollars on airfare. I was with my friend when she needed me the most. I was home. Every single family staying at Stanford was home.

Home, I’ve come to realize, is the place where you are when you’d rather not be anywhere else.