Stories of the Clinic
Waiting in the sitting room /sitting in the waiting room
At the Tijuana cancer clinic, I usually was the only kid around. Surrounded by older people who had been told by their doctors to go home to die, and now being there in Tijuana, this clinic was their last hope. Maybe 2/3 of them died, but 1/3 of them left alive and better.
A couple of favorite stories.
One of the few other kids who came in, didn’t have cancer, but he had some horrible disease. We had a lot of fun together. See the full story here.
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The usual group were sitting in the waiting room and an older couple came in, the man wearing a hat with a veil. He sat down while his wife went to talk to the receptionist. But before too long, the smell of death, of rotting meat, filled the room. One man ran outside wretching. A nurse soon came and took the veiled man back into the examination rooms.
When they came out again, as the wife was taking care of business, I asked the man if I could see his face. He lifted the veil and his nose and one cheek looked like hamburger, and it stank.
A week later he came back without the veil and a bandage that was flat on his face. What happened? He said, It’s a miracle. My doctor back home told me I had no chance of living, but the doctor here removed all the cancer and there's none of it left. I asked, Did they take off your nose?? Yes, said the man. Can I see?? He looked at his wife. He looked at me. He looked around. He took off the bandage, and he had no nose, I could see his cheekbone, and into his sinuses. It was one of the most wonderful things I had ever seen. The next day he came in, I asked to see it again. This time he wasn't so shy, and I sat on his lap and really looked into his skull.
The next time he came in, a couple of weeks later, no bandage but he had a nose and a cheek. I wanted to see.
Can you take it off? I asked,
Yes, says he.
Let me see, says I.
It took a little effort, but he took the nose and cheek off and there it was. The same bones and sinuses as before, less raw, and he showed me the prosthetic nose, and how to put it back on.
My dad told me that while we were talking his wife told him that my interest brightened up this man's life. He was so sure that he was going to die, and he was so ashamed of the smell and the look of the cancer. But I made him feel better.
As far as I remember, he never came back to the clinic. We heard that he died soon after getting back home.
A man came in one day and after a while I noticed his left hand looked like a cartoon hand. A thumb and three fingers. I had to ask, and he told me the story.
He was a railroad man. One day, he hopped off a train, his wedding ring got caught on something, the train kept going but he didn't. His finger was ripped out. Not just his finger, but the finger bone in the palm of his hand was taken out from the wrist. He said the hole quickly healed up. The web between his middle finger and pinky looked normal, except that there were only three fingers.
That story made me squeamish for years about wearing a ring. I wore a wedding ring for 10 years, but every single time it clicked against something, this story rushed in.
Sitting across from me was an old couple, and another old man. The two men had cancer. They were talking, I was listening. One man says to the other, "It seems to me, if we are lucky, we live long enough to get very sick." The wife hits him across the chest. "What?" She points at me. He says, "l'm horribly sorry, David." At the time it didn't mean much. Now I understand that they knew how sick I was.
These days were spent with sick, frightened older people who needed to share their wisdom, and I was a kid and a captive audience. The wisdom was fairly typical but these below are important to me.
A woman who wasn't as old as the other grown ups said;
Don't regret anything you do,
and don't do anything you would regret.
I think that was excellent advice.
A very sick man, near his end said;
Given two choices, choose the one you will regret the least.
And then this important wisdom...
One man told me that after a life of being very busy and ambitious and working hard, he spent his last years sick, and was spending his last days in a waiting room in Tijuana. He told me that all of the money that you can make, all the titles you can be given, all the accolades, all the stuff you can collect, is worthless.
He said that all you were left with, all that you can have with you in a waiting room in a cancer clinic in Tijuana, are stories. He told me to collect stories. Learn to tell stories. Preserve your stories. And tell the truth. Don't make yourself to be more of a hero than you are. Don’t exaggerate and concoct details. He said if you add details, the next time you tell the story to the same person, they might remember those details, but you will probably forget them. And they will know you're a liar.
I took that wisdom pretty seriously. I learned to collect stories. I learned to tell stories. I've had a life that generated some decent stories.
And you get to read them here.