Journal 6/18/08

Today was my second day of physical therapy (after the total knee replacement) and it's going fine, except for the part where the therapist pushes on my knee in an attempt to get it to bend, possibly farther than it has bent since I was 10 years old. (Remember how limber we were as kids?) Anyway, she got it to 108 degrees today which is pretty good.

When I first went in on Monday, I was thinking that I was a pretty sad case. Then a kid on crutches comes in. He's about 14 years old, way too skinny, wearing a baseball cap, and he has on a shirt that says, "Bone Cancer Sucks." His mother is with him. She looks like she's been run over a couple of times. But she also looks like she gets up everytime. She's carrying an inflated butt doughnut (the kid barely has any meat on him, muchless any fat on his butt) and she has a bucket, apparently for when he throws up. They have the looks of people who can't stand more questions from strangers, and they've had just about all the sympathy they can handle.

I smile and nod. They seem relieved.

I was the last person out of PT before the lunch break today. When the therapist asked how I was doing, I told her about having seen the kid on Monday.

"Yeah," she said, "he's just finished ANOTHER round of chemo."

She went on to say that when she was taking her training at San Francisco State, all of her patients were in the pediatric oncology section. "The kids were dying," she said, "but the doctors insisted on their going through physical therapy. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't push those kids, not when they were already in so much pain. I had to switch departments."

Kids and cancer. I get so sad, I want to scream.

I read something the other day that said cancer may be caused by things our GRANDMOTHERS were exposed to. How you going to overcome that?

Excuse me for a minute. I've got to scream.