Christmas in the Cancer Ward

This past Christmas, Jesus did not come to me as a baby in a manger but as a man on a cross. It was Lent in Advent.

On December 7, I checked into a hospital for what turned out to be a 22-day stay to undergo an extremely rough process called a BEAM stem cell transplant. The first six days involved infusions of massive amounts of three different kinds of chemotherapy–substantially more than is given in any other kind of procedure. Its purpose is to kill cancer cells.

A brief explanation of the chemotherapy problem: my body was at war with itself, so I brought in some outside mercenaries. They were not exercising good fire discipline. Yes, they were killing cancer cells, but they were killing many healthy cells as well. It was a slaughterhouse. I learned how a cow must feel after being minced into hamburger.

Physical duress, I was warned, would be accompanied by spiritual duress. On my second evening, the night nurse, whom I’d never seen before, stood at the foot of my bed and said: “There is no time to beat around the bush, so I’m going to say it straight out. You’re going to suffer. With what you’re about to go through, you’ll need to know why. What does it mean? There are two basic attitudes. The first is: ‘poor me. The fickle finger of fate has come down to crush me. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s random suffering. It’s cruel. Why me?’ This perspective produces bitterness and anger. The second attitude sees suffering as serving a higher purpose. It has meaning. It’s meant to change you in a way that you wouldn’t be changed without undergoing it. The higher purpose is to draw you higher–to make something more out of what you are now. So, accept the suffering. Don’t try to walk away from it; walk into it. When things get really rough, remember the higher purpose.”

I was stunned. This was the first of four remarkable experiences with hospital personnel. I wondered how they knew to talk to me this way. On my nightstand was a rosary, Jesus Calling—a book of daily meditations drawn mainly from the Bible—, and St. Josemaría Escrivá’s The Way of the Cross. Perhaps they had seen these? However, this couldn’t have been the case with the night nurse since the lights were out in my room when she entered for the first time. Also, a very gently disposed nurse, soon after having entered my room one afternoon, but well away from the nightstand, asked, “Are you a believer?”

I answered, “Yes, I am a Christian.” The conversation went on from there.

One of the maintenance workers, a lovely Haitian woman, saw Jesus Calling on the nightstand and said, “I’ve heard of this book. I have to get a copy.” I called my wife and asked if she could bring our extra copy the next time she visited me. Several days later, I was able to present the book to my delighted cleaning lady.

One of the most extraordinary events took place towards the end of my stay. It was the late afternoon, and a technician came in to take my “vitals”–blood pressure, oxygen content, pulse, etc. She was a large black woman from the Caribbean. My wife was also in the room, so the conversation naturally enough began about family. When it came her turn, the Caribbean lady explained that she had experienced a very late pregnancy. When she went to the doctor, he told her that her baby girl would be deformed, mentally deficient, and would not live for long. He advised an abortion. She roared back at him, “Do not touch my baby! This is not the way of the Lord. You will not touch my baby!” She gave birth to a perfectly normal baby girl, who is now a healthy teenager.

I was so moved by her testimony that I got out of my bedside armchair and moved some furniture so I could give her a full body hug. And there the two of us stood for some time, hugging each other, and praising the Lord at the top of our voices.

When I reflected upon this event, I thought that what really happened was that the two of us, who had just met, were hugging Christ in each other, and He was hugging back.

While I could still read during my first week in the hospital, I was going over for the third time The Way of the Cross, a deeply profound series of reflections. Having it recently in mind triggered some insights from what I was experiencing to the Passion.

For instance, the severity of my fatigue opened a small window: “Oh, that’s right. Christ knew utter exhaustion. He fell three him times under weight beyond our imagining. He couldn’t move.” The idea of movement flooded my mind because I couldn’t move. I was pinioned to my bed. He was pinioned to a cross. In an infinitesimal way, my own tiredness and immobility allowed me to enter his. It was a portal to his Passion.

Before I left the hospital, I think every nurse in the ward had seen me naked. This was extremely discomfiting. Yet I was not naked before my enemies but before people who were trying to help me. Another small window opened: “Oh, that’s right. Jesus was stripped naked, but He was naked unto his enemies who ripped off his clothes in order to further humiliate Him, to give further cause to mock and jeer at Him.” Now do you have a better idea of what He went through? As far removed as my experience was, I could answer “yes”, in a way I couldn’t have before.

In a sense other than St. Paul intended, the Cancer Ward taught me that “you are not your own.” (1 Cor 6:19) My body would shake and take off in whatever direction it desired. It was another clear lesson in how small I am. There was nothing in my body that I could control. I was just a quivering bag of bones with a soul. The experience of my nothingness was acute, as was the realization of the meaninglessness of most of my life’s endeavors. How much of my energy was invested in things that don’t matter!

It was a painful moment of truth. On the other hand, it removed everything that had interposed itself between me and God–the One who was holding me in existence at that very instant. It is almost impossible to pray in such a condition. All I could manage was the repeated plea, “Jesus, help me.”

The higher purpose is a Person. The Person is on the Way of the Cross. Why did He allow the weight of my suffering to befall me? After all, why me? “Because,” He answered, “I want you. I have to get you ready.”

At the very end of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn’s monumental testament to the indescribable sufferings of the Soviet people, in which he personally shared, he wrote: “Bless you, prison”–because it was there that he was brought to encounter and embrace the higher purpose. In my own little way, I can echo this benediction and say: “Bless you, Cancer Ward.”