When I was 10, my dad ordered us some baby chickens for our new psudo ranch in the country out of a a catalog. Then he built them a pen in our our unfinished basement, with warming lights, food and water, and a little exercise area, courtesy of my brother and me. This is where they would grow until they were big enough to move out to the chicken coop. We came home one afternoon to find one of the tiniest chicks, stuck in their water dish. She has been there a while and was drenched and exhausted from trying to get out. Broken. So was I. I was not going to let this little bird die. I wrapped it in a washcloth and slept in the basement with her, next to the warming lights that night. She was better in the morning and went on to live the life that all chickens lived on our ranch, which was a total free range, life of luxury. You don’t eat your pets.
When I was 16, I was on my way to babysit for some family friends. A little bird flew in to my windshield and landed on the hood. Broken, but alive. I’m not exactly sure how, but I brought the bird into the car with me and took it along to the babysitting job where I nursed it back to health in a shoe box. A little food, a little water, a little time. It flew away the next morning when I took off the lid.
I’m 36, and as I sit here watching my broken little bird, struggling in pain in her hospital bed, and I have no idea how to fix her. She’s on serious levels of morphine and still she hurts. She’s agitated and confused from the drugs and doesn’t want me to touch her. I’m broken. What do you do when you can’t help the little bird?
She started chemo yesterday with the hope that it will work fast than the cancer. We leave, by ambulance, in 15 minutes to the radiation oncologist where we will begin the mapping for radiation. Radiation should start on Monday. Please Lord, get us thru Monday.
This is obviously a very aggressive cancer. I’m thinking of it as a school yard bully, aggressive but ultimately very weak. And she is strong. And so are we.
