Riding With Mom

(This is a repost of something I wrote fourteen years ago on the twentieth anniversary of finding out I had cancer.)

The survival rate for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 1988 for a thirty eight year old man was about forty percent. Twenty years after being diagnosed with that form of cancer, I am still alive and in relatively good health. Besides the doctors and nurses who saved my life, I have to thank my friends, Garet and Dennis who helped me through my chemotherapy. I have to thank my brothers and sisters, who all took a blood test to see if they were candidates for bone marrow transplanting, if I needed it. If they ever wonder why I love them all so much, that is one reason why. Most of all I have to thank my mother and father, who drove into Chicago every Tuesday so they could accompany me to the clinic where I got my chemo-therapy.

The first time my parents went with me to the clinic, I believe my mom drove us in her shiny new, Dodge Caravan. Whether it was my mom or dad doesn't matter because, whoever it was, I didn't like their driving. Not that it was bad, just that I was/am a very impatient driver and I also didn't approve of the route they took, so the next time I insisted that I drive. As I slid into the drivers seat of my mom's car, she moved to the bench seat directly behind the driver. I don't think my mom or dad had ever rode with me before, at least not through the streets of Chicago. As I sped up Halsted Street, and whipped around onto Ogden Avenue, I kept hearing little squeaks and gasps from the back seat. It was my mom, "Alan, can't you slow down a little?", she asked. "No mom, trust me, I know what I'm doing." I replied. My dad just laughed.

So it went for twelve weeks, every Tuesday, dad in the passenger seat, mom in the back seat making sounds like a kid on a roller coaster, and me driving like a bat out of hell. The drive back was always much more sedate, because I had just been pumped full of toxic chemicals and vomiting was a very real possibility. The funny thing about it, is that my mom was one of the people who taught me how to drive, and I drive exactly like she does. Just ask Mark. He makes the same squeaks and gasping noises sitting in the back of moms Dodge Caravan when she drives.