Authors

  1. Johnson, Karen RNP-C

Article Content

Poetry by Cancer Caregivers

Submissions are welcome from oncologists, oncology nurses, and other cancer caregivers. E-mail only, please, to: [email protected], and include affiliation/title, address, and phone number, along with a photo, if available.

  
KAREN JOHNSON, RNP-C... - Click to enlarge in new windowKAREN JOHNSON, RNP-C, is Family Nurse Practitioner and Nurse Manager at Wood River Health Services, a community health center in Rhode Island, and a 15-year survivor of lymphoma.

MORNING TEA

 

Lying in my bed, it's warm

 

I stretch, thinking, turn over

 

For just a few more minutes.

 

Tea, warm, a beautiful brown

 

Thinking of a cup of tea

 

Gets me started in my day.

 

When I was a child,

 

Tea was for sick people

 

Tea with honey for sore throats.

 

Forgotten in my college years

 

Cast aside for coffee,

 

Coffee needed to keep going.

 

Coffee brings more energy

 

More energy than tea, addictive

 

I must combat fatigue.

 

Fatigue of life-fight back with coffee

 

One cup, then two, then twelve each day

 

Just to keep going.

 

Coffee to extract every bit of energy

 

From my cells, twelve cups every day

 

Why am I so tired?

 

Cancer, they said, serious, widespread

 

Chemotherapy, radiation

 

So tired, coffee no longer satisfies.

 

Twelve cups of coffee, so pitiful, so sad

 

A long missed diagnosis

 

What I did to just keep going!!

 

No more coffee!!

 

I don't like the memory of how I

 

Whipped my fatigued body.

 

Awakening now, stiff, sore, older

 

But cancer free

 

I take time for gratitude.

 

Morning tea, warm, comforting

 

Awakens my spirit gently

 

as I travel through my day.

 

Remembering morning tea

 

Remembering days of coffee

 

Treasuring these days of tea.