Roberta Flack

Today I picked up at friend at 7:00 a.m. to take her to her first chemotherapy treatment. It was very interesting to see the procedure which would take over 7 hours. There are pre-meds introduced intravenously, then the chemo, and then the saline to clean the veins. First a warm towel like cloth is placed around the arms because they make the veins pop up (never knew that before). There were young people, old people, men and women. All of the staff members were extremely compassionate, as I would think you would have to be to work in this part of the hospital. The other patients were very free with information about the process and the after effects. They offered advice about calling the doctor immediately if anything appears to be going wrong; they advised that she should not try to be a martyr, call at the first sign of trouble. They were telling me this information to transmit for her.

I sat with her for an hour, then in the lobby for an hour. I took lots of stuff to do--my one woman entertainment center (my iPad, my People magazine and my drawing tablet. Finished the magazine, went to the cafeteria for a great turkey burger and brought her a chicken sandwich; did a drawing of some of the Queen's hats (from my People magazine), played Words with Friends and by then the nurse came out to tell me that they would be finished in ten minutes. During the time I was sitting in the lobby, a group of people came in with a therapy dog for the chemo patients-that extended my time in the lobby since I knew she would be happy with the dog (and I'm not a dog person).

We left at 2:30 which was far sooner than I had anticipated. We had a back up plan for pick up just in case she was there beyond 4 p.m. I was happy that I was able to be there for her.

Oh yeah--I called this Roberta Flack because my friend told me that the song which was running through her head as she was anticipating the chemo was the song by Roberta Flack "Killing Me Softly with His Song." We had talked about how someone said that chemo kills you and brings you back to life.

Now, I am off to my Author event this evening, knowing how grateful we should be for good health and good friends.