I got to talking to a woman as we both waited for radiation treatment today. I see her there most every day. You can tell she’s been through chemo by the head covering she wears every day. Every situation has its own chitchat. The small talk in this waiting room usually starts with asking how many treatments a person has, what point they’re at in treatment and whether there has been or will be chemo or surgery. It’s a given that everyone has some sort of cancer, but it seems to be left to the individual to volunteer what type they have. That’s a question that’s rarely asked.

It turns out this woman has lung cancer, and had a tumor in her brain as well. Surgery, chemo and radiation seem to be holding the brain tumor at bay, but the lung has another spot. Her doctor isn’t recommending surgery for that. He’s concerned about her ability to withstand the recovery, given all she’s already been through and apparently the type she has will come back even after surgery. She’s going to get this radiation and if that doesn’t work, then more chemo. She’s on oral chemo now. Then she’ll see. She might opt for surgery later on anyway.

It would be understandable if the picture you have in your mind now is of an almost skeletal, frail looking person, but that’s not the case. She looks healthy, except for the telltale headscarf. She must be at least fifty and her face is relatively unlined. Her color is good. Her expression is pleasant. She told me that most of her family is living with her at the moment. It’s not unlike my own, including a sister and adult children. They’re helping to pay the mortgage. She would have lost the house otherwise. She’s on SSI, which pays her $900 dollars a month. Out of that, she has to give $200 to Medicaid. She wishes she could work, even part time. She says she thinks it would help her mental state. She used to work eighty hours a week at two jobs when she was well. You could see that she raised her kids mostly on her own. I asked, given her work history, why she wasn’t getting SSD, which pays more, but the reason is simple. She’d make too much money to get Medicaid and not enough to pay for medical insurance. There’s a two year wait to get Medicare when you’re on SSD and even then, it might not cover everything. She can’t afford a high enough income to live on. Now that’s a system for you.

As matter of factly as you might say that you hope to work at a job for a given number of years or discuss any other practicality, she said, “I just want five more years. My youngest son will be twenty-five then. I think that’s old enough so he’d be OK, don’t you?” She said this with no hint of self-pity, or even sadness. I hope she gets a lot more than that. I hope she gets to see her grandchildren grow up.