A Sign of the Times

My chemo doc is part of a very busy practice.  Something like six or seven MD's, a complete chemo lab, a blood lab, and so forth.  So the parking lot is quite busy. 

But the parking spots closest to the front door are posted with signs like this one -- saving those spots for cancer patients. 

When Deb and I first visited this facility, I thought it was very cool and very thoughtful -- these reserved parking spots.  Clearly it would make life a little easier for "them": the folks who were suffering either from their cancer or from their treatments to make the cancer go away.  And I felt a distance between me and "them."  After all, I wasn't suffering from either disease or treatment.  So we didn't park our car in these spots.     

After several visits, I felt it would be okay if we parked our car in one of these spots.  I still wasn't suffering,  but I had surgeries behind me and before me.  And radiation treatments.  And chemo.  And I certainly did have cancer.  So I felt I qualified. 

By ten weeks after our initial visit, I was deeply grateful for having these spots available when we had appointments.  I was so weak that the difference between walking 15 feet to the front door of the office or walking 50 feet to the same door was huge.  And the message on the signs now said much more to me than the words indicated.  They seemed to say: "We understand what you're going through -- because we've seen so much of it long before you started coming.   And all we can do for you is offer this small token: we want you to park here because we understand." 

And after every visit, I would forget about the signs.  But then as we pulled in to the parking lot for our next visit, there they were: the signs and their offering of understanding.  And it made life just a little more tolerable. 

Ever since then, I've parked in these spots without giving it serious thought.  Yes, I am a cancer patient.  And so I'm allowed this special parking privilege -- whether I need it or not. 

But something happened to me during my last visit -- a visit I made just to pick up a form.  I felt I no longer qualified to park in these special spaces.  Just because I had had cancer didn't mean that I was still a patient.  And more importantly, if I thought of myself as a cancer patient, I was holding myself within the confines of the disease.  Identifying myself with an illness I no longer had. 

If I'm declaring myself to be cancer-free (see the previous posting), then I could no longer take advantage of those parking spots set aside for cancer patients. 

So from now on, when I visit my chemo doc, I will park my car the extra 50 feet away from the front door -- no matter how many empty spots there are for cancer patients -- and joyfully walk the extra distance.  Walking which nowadays is no problem at all. 

Kind of a nice sign, don't you think?