The Ninth Floor

We've become family here on the ninth floor.

Kay folds Bob's clothes that he has started in the morning, someone put them in the dryer, and she folds them into nice neat piles. He makes his meals, and puts most of his food away, but we do the rest, which he does not see. His wife Marsha is in the hospital now. He is very concerned. He is distracted. She has had intractable pain and had to go in to have an operation to stabilize the spine. And he hopes she will be able to resume her chemo and radiation. He loves her dearly and is a tremendous caregiver.

Marius and Monica left today. They were here for six months from St Croix. They were happy to go home. We hear them laughing in their room at night. It is good. He did well, and is always cheerful and encouraging to all.

Thad and Martha are here from Cape Cod. They are harvesting his stem cells and will give chemo. It was sudden. They thought he was having a stroke, but no, it was this. She is motherly and he is bald now and friendly. They tell about the bus route, the organic lunch place, interesting museums, good restaurants if you feel up to going out. They hear about Redeemer and they go. They will go again when they can. They have been here two months and expect to leave a month after I do.

Nate is here by himself. His young wife and daughter are in California. She can not come, she has to take care of their daughter. He has been here four times. He comes into the kitchen while we are all eating dinner and gets his Campbell's soup out of his cabinet to microwave. I say, "Nate, would you like to share our chicken?" Hesitantly, he accepts and then receives the green beans we send over. There's no one here to cook for him, and he is young, we share. He has been on other floors and knows others from previous visits. He feels comfortable with them.

Elize and Frank are across the hall. Frank is here for chemo and radiation. But after a week he has had a crisis. While leaving after a treatment, to get a cab he has a seizure. He is bleeding. It is an emergency. Back to urgent care and lines inserted and blood, hand pumped, as fast as it can go. "Call your children, this doesn't look good". Frank survives and is in ICU for days and today he will get very intricate surgery. We see the hand of God in this that they were not in the taxi when the bleed occurred. We have dinner with Elize and she recognizes that God has them here where world class doctors and nurses have saved his life and that He did not allow them to get in the taxi. We pray with her as we all leave, that God would strengthen Frank, give the surgeons great technical ability, that Elize would have peace and that Frank would again come back to the ninth floor.

Judy and Diane have joined the family recently. And Jeff and his sister came yesterday. We all meet in the kitchen in the morning and evening. Everyone checks in with each other. "How was your treatment today?" "Are you doing okay?" "Do you have any side effects?" "Has anyone seen Bob today?" "Elize, how is Frank today?" Sometimes we wear masks and gloves. Sometimes we wear wigs, or turbans, or hats. We exchange DVD's, offer each other ice cream, talk about how fantastic our accommodations are, how kind the staff is, exchange information that we have learned on line and are thankful for the doctors that we are involved with.

It comes quickly here. The sense of family. We say, here, here, no one is an atheist. Everyone believes in hope and the future. For ourselves and for each other.