| Cheryl's Way Cheryl came
walking by one day and popped in
to say "Hi." It was
toward the end of my stay and I
was on my third day of recovery
from abdominal surgery. We got
talking, and in a rather perky,
unselfconscious sort of way,
Cheryl passed on several
interesting things about herself.
She was thirty-six and she had
been dealing with cancer for
quite a while. She named several
different organs that it had
invaded. "In fact," she
said, she had just had her
seventh surgery that morning.
"My God," I replied,
"and you're up walking
around already! What kind of
surgery did you have?"
"Abdominal," she
chirped. There I lay having
barely moved in three days from
the same surgery, and she was out
doing laps* already. Still
standing at the foot of my bed
she went on about her husband and
her two kids, and what a nice day
it was outside.
Three
months later I talked with one of
the nurses over the phone. I was
in a new apartment by now and
doing quite well. She mentioned
that Cheryl had just left the
hospital again after yet another
surgery. I asked her to call me
if and when Cheryl should come
back in. It was another couple of
weeks later when she called and
said,
"Cheryl's
back."
I
raced over to the hospital. This
time it was I who stood at the
foot of her bed, but she was
still the strong one. She lay
there quiet and tired. She was
glad to see me, though, as she
relayed all the information about
her now surgery number nine.
Halfway through the conversation,
she started to get excited, as
they were going to try a new kind
of chemo on her in a few weeks
that would go directly to her
largest tumor. This enthusiasm
was not feigned in any way. This
woman lay there, her body full of
cancer, and yet everything was
wonderful because there was
something else to try. Cheryl
would never, and I mean never,
stop trying. That was her way.
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