That elusive cure

“Hi, are you waiting for treatment?”

I looked up from my phone. Speaking to other patients was always better than scrolling through Facebook. “Yup. You?”

She was a little younger than me, her brown hair short in what I call the ‘cancer cut’. “No, I’m finished now.”

For a moment, a green streak of jealously flashed through me. Cured. Remission. Words I dreamed of being applied to me. “Just visiting?” I asked.

“Yes.” She stared off out the window and over the rooftops that made up the view from the Delamere waiting room. Radioactive signs stuck on the roof of the pharmacy always made me stare as well. “I’m Janie.” She turned and smiled at me, her face warm and welcoming.

“Kathy. Nice to meet you.” I shoved my phone in my handbag and smiled back. “Volunteering or just come back to say hello to the staff?”

“Saying my thanks, but they aren’t the ones that fixed me.” Janie leaned in ever so slightly. “I was stage four with bowel cancer. Mets in my lungs and my liver. Docs said I was incurable, whatever the hell that means. Slow death, if you ask me. The last scan they did on me before I found the cure showed shadows in the bones of my leg.” She patted her right thigh and pointed to a spot. “Right about there I think.”

I’d heard about so called cures. Read about them on the internet. Found them in books, newspaper articles and magazines, lured in by those sought after words: remission, cure. People emailed me links and sent me article cuttings; fruits that cure, but no testimonials, just a viral video with a sales link and after further research I find it gives you Parkinson’s. Spices that you required you to take as a bulk dose, a hundred supplements that might help but who knew. Foods you should eat, foods to avoid, meditation, imagine that bright light and trigger your immune system, and it was all bollocks. I’d tried many over the last two years, and yet my end date kept creeping closer. Cancer cure myths are big money spinners. Cancer patients are desperate. The charlatans take advantage, and here was one, sat next to me, about to tell me to invest in some new miracle.

I leaned back, away from the woman and crossed my arms. I’d do her the courtesy of listening, then fill my arms with my prescribed chemo poison. It was the only real option for me.

“I was waiting here, in this very ward when a man came to me and said he had been cured. I was sceptical, as I am sure you are.” Janie leaned in even further and whispered, “He told me what cured him.” She pulled back and looked around to see if anyone was listening in. The ward was surprisingly empty this morning. It was usually full the point of standing room only. No one was sitting within earshot. “Dave told me he’d been found exactly as he was selecting me, as I am selecting you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And how exactly is that?”

“Well, he was chosen as he was sixty-five and just retired. His finder felt bad for newly retired people who get sick. Dave chose me because I look like his daughter. I picked you because you’re the youngest person here. You need to be cured as you have most of your adult life to live out still.”

Janie was probably making a common mistake. I looked young, much younger than my forty-one years. Most people pegged me as late twenties. But by now I was curious as to what she was going to say, and the wait was always ages and ages, and listening to Janie was as good as any other way to pass the time.

“So what cancer do you have?”

“Same as you, bowel cancer.”

“Oh, I figured you had breast cancer.”

I shrugged. Wasn’t the first time I heard that. Most people judged my age and assumed breast cancer. People my age and fitness just didn’t get bowel cancer. Except when they do.

“Kathy Wyatt,” one of the nurses walked into the room calling my name. It was the nurse called Jo. A young girl with a head of blonde spiral curls and a wonderful bedside manner. I was happy to be seen to by her. Not that any of the nurses were bad. Considering the circumstances they were all terrific.

“It was nice talking to you, maybe we’ll run into each other again.” I gathered my things and stood. As I did, Janie pressed a slip of paper into my palm.

“If you want to know more, call me.”

I nodded, still undecided as to what level of crackpot she was. Then I gave her a smile before following Jo into the ward.