Thursday, April 18, 2013

And on an unrelated note...

When you work any type of retail you end up with favourite customers. As a rule they are the ones who make you laugh or are just so lovely that you can't help but like them. Often when you chat to them over time you find out that they have lead extraordinary lives.  Today one of the more favourite ones came in and made a rather odd request to say a prayer for her.

Now it was an odd request of a firm agnostic, not to mention it was out of the blue, so of course one enquired as to why she would need them. It seems that they have found lung cancer and are set to remove part of her lungs rather than go the chemo route. Chatting to her one could hear her body struggle to get breath as she spoke. Words came out with that all too familiar wheezing, gasp sound that is never a good indicator.

It was only caught because her regular doctor was away and the new bloke, rather than hearing her chest and thinking oh it's just the remains of the pleurisy/ pneumonia that she had at Christmas (the woman doesn't have what you would describe as good health) , had sent her off for chest x-rays. That was when they found the shadow and sent her off for even more painful, invasive tests. As she said some of them were worse than the news they finally gave her. That new was, of course, that the nodes in her lungs were cancerous.

That charming, energetic, immaculately turned out 72 year old woman has survived floods, uprisings, breast cancer, an assortment of surgeries and long term ill health. She is the sort of woman who makes you laugh because as she says if you don't sometimes you will just cry. Now one isn't much for prayers, but one sincerely hopes that she will pull through. Work is certainly a brighter place when she turns up. 

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't know you and I don't know her, but that was very touching. I'll put out a little good energy and hope it finds its way to her. Thanks for sharing!

Master's piece said...

And thank you for the good energy... it can't hurt :D