Hope For Holly

If you are interested in cancer and aren’t reading Leroy Sievers’ posts on NPR, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. Leroy has been posting daily since his diagnosis a year and a half ago. His posts are witty, funny, very sad (at times) and insanely inspirational. In short, he is the type of writer that I aspire to be some day.

Having just come back from Hawaii, Holly and I spent the week being visitors. Despite having been to Maui a dozen or so times and have discovered many of the little haunts that the locals go to, it is still very obvious that we are visitors. As much as we try to fit in, we are simply just another out of shape (though not out of shape as most), non-tan, couple from the mainland.

Leroy Sievers posted an entry right before we left on being a local at his clinic. He knows where to sit, where to park, who to speak with, where the elevators are and is always willing to help out a visitor. Like visitors to Maui or Newport Beach, we are easy to spot.

Knowing that we would be going to the clinic this morning, I carried that post in my head the whole week. I thought quite a bit how awkward it would be to go into the clinic and not really know the drill. Who would help us out? Who would guide us to where to sit? Can we watch movies? Is there wifi (there isn’t)? Can we talk on the phone? What do we do first? Can we eat? What, where, who, why, how?????

Thankfully, our oncology center, and I suspect that all similar types of facilities, has it’s own version of Leroy. People were especially helpful. Even the grumpy nurse (inside joke) seemed more friendly today. They brought lunch in for many of the patients. Many of them had at least one family member with them. People were jovial and everyone went out of their way to make sure that Holly was as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

When it came time to leave, we made our appointment for 3 weeks out, took our card and left. Next time, we will be locals and hopefully we will be able to help out as well.