The Elevator

We were at Mayo Clinic for another appointment. We rode up the elevator in silence with what looked like a close-knit Italian family. The family stood in a circle around the older woman sitting in a wheel chair, presumably the matriarch of the family, like they were protecting her from the test results they were expecting to get that day. She clung to her beaded rosary, all entwined in her fingers, like all the hope she had left was her faith in God. At the time I had no faith that someone was coming to save me but I recognized all too well that same hope and desperation I saw in her. I couldn’t help but wish I could trade places with her. She was so lucky, she had at least 30 years on me and I would have given anything to guarantee another 30 years. Her kids were grown.

On that short elevator ride up to the oncology floor I found myself bargaining again. If I could survive this you can kill me when I’m 80 in whatever terrible way you want to. Just give me a chance to use what I’ve learned from this experience, to live life so different than I had been somehow.

I understood that Mayo Clinic was the best of the best. Presidents would go there to get their care. But they got the “executive package”, a full workup of the body detecting problems well before they started. I wasn’t one of them. I was a normal patient where I attempted to get a synthetic cure for a life filled with synthetic ingredients. This synthetic cure to fix the aftermath of a life unlived to its fullest potential. I chronically put my wants and needs off for someday in the future, where I imagined doing the things I enjoyed someday, every day. A delusion that only retirement could give. And now here I was, facing the reality that there might not be retirement to do those things I was putting off.

So in that brief elevator ride to the 12th floor I made a covenant to myself. Not a day would be wasted. Not one inspiration would be left ignored. I would live differently than I had thus far, and that was the day of my 2nd birth.