Confections For Cats

After the family meeting with Dr. Reed, he had the results of Mathew’s blood work taken earlier that morning. He told Mathew that he will go to the infusion center to receive his first outpatient VDC chemo. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we didn’t realize that this was the routine for these Sarcoma appointments. So Mathew was not mentally prepared for that chemo. Dr. Reed told him to come back tomorrow. “A day or two won’t make a difference,” he told us. Dr. Reed is one of the nicest people and an excellent doctor. I know he was just trying to assure us that it was okay to delay the chemo but when he said that I thought, “It doesn’t matter.”  I was still in let’s hurry, let’s push and muscle through the process to get to the other side. I hadn’t yet learned to live in the process.  So the subject of the Sperm Cryopreservation came up and that Mathew had not been able to provide a sample before his first chemo. Dr. Reed asked him if he wanted to try again since we...

Mature content. I found this poem yesterday. It goes back to the post about sperm cryopreservation when Mathew was first transferred to start chemotherapy. It is probably a first or second draft, I am not editing it further at this point. T he Hospital Poem  by Mathew Rodgers Close my eyes and have visions of the NC mountainsides spinning around me with boars, squirrels and deer, unseen, unsung, but present. Wheeled down every corridor past healthy people. Past unhealthy people. Wheeled down corridors where the doors close automatically and the walls lean in hungry and ready to devour us - the unhealthy. Drain strange sauce from my right lung twice My penis looks like a creature from a wax museum, Friends and family visit - smiling faces. The more my limbs swell the harder I find it to be witty and clever. The more my lungs wheeze. Air doesn’t fill the chambers. As I’m about to fall asleep a woman with a strange mask puts it on my face. I br...