Yesterday, I jumped on the R train after a lunch appointment at South Ferry and headed back to the office. As I got on the nearly empty subway car, a woman entered ahead of me. I could hear her huffing and puffing and found myself thinking “how out of shape she sounds.”
A few moments later, she began a conversation with a young man sitting across from her. In true New York fashion, I tried to look as if I wasn’t listening but my ears were tuned in.
She asked him if he was a radiologist. He wasn’t but she had correctly observed that he was carrying large radiological films in a cold-resistant pouch. She then went onto to thank him for his work and disclosed that she was a breast cancer survivor. She now makes it her business to thank anyone involved in the health care world, specifically folks who have anything to do with radiology. She then went on to fill in the gaps.
“I was with my mother down south, sleeping in her bed. I always do that when I’m there. She noticed a lump and told me to promise to get it check out when I got back to New York. So when I got back, I went for a check up, and they found the lump. It was just a few millimeters in diameter, but I am so glad they found it.”
Turns out breast cancer runs in her family; her sister died of it.
“When I was getting chemo, I had to take ___. ” She mentioned a drug I’d never heard of. Then she laughed; it was a deep throaty, laugh. ”It didn’t make my hair fall out. The other patients would ask me: ‘what are you living on?’ I’m living on Jesus,” she offered, laughing again.
Then, as if she was feeling self-conscious, all of a sudden, she blurted out, “Am I boring you? Sorry, I just feel like I have to tell my story.”
Her conversationalist wasn’t bored; neither was I. So she kept going.
“Yeah, my hair never fell out, and I am so grateful that I’m alive. So,so grateful.”
I found myself humbled. Humbled by her story, her gratitude, her laughter, her joy at being given a second chance to live life to its fullest.
Just before I got off at Herald Square, I told her I’d been eavesdropping and thanked her for sharing her story.
“Oh, OK, OK.” Her face lit up once more and she smiled one last time.
