Could You Love A Cancer Patient?

For my Firefighter, who already proved he can.

Could you love a cancer patient despite my burdened health? Can you provide the love and care that my heart has never felt?

Are you ready for hours spent at the hospital waiting, for news you don’t know if you’ll be loving or hating? Do you have the patience for the brain fog I possess? Or the ability to smile through my CAT scans, nonetheless? Will you research conditions I’ll develop over time, and learn the medical jargon the specialists love to chime?

Could you learn to change a bag, tube, or dressing? And spend the nights praying for a miracle or at least a blessing? Will you handle my tears when I start crying, because we both know that slowly, I am dying? My medication and treatments cost an arm and a leg, and sometimes we’ll have to call the insurance to beg. But when things go bad and my body starts pulsing, could you make the 2 am ER drive as I lay next to you, convulsing?

All I need is your support and love; to be the ground below me and the sky above. To always kiss me good morning and hold me at night, and remind me we have milk, or eggs, or that things will be alright. Will you please remind me that I am young and carefree? Because when I look in your eyes, I will always try to find the old me. And when I look at my body as a vessel deteriorating on the inside, will you still kiss my scars that I desperately try to hide?

It’s not easy housing this cancer that’s making me fight to live, so I need someone brave with enough strength to give. And after learning about the anxiety and battles that make up my life, could you still see me for the person I am? Could you still take me for a wife?

Tags : cancer, life, Love, Miscellaneous, personal, poems, poetry, ramblings, writing