Submissions are welcome from oncologists, oncology nurses, and other cancer caregivers. E-mail only, please, to: mailto:[email protected], and include affiliation/title, address, and phone number, along with a photo, if available.
"It's okay, Doctor"
I knew something was not right
Well before you ever did
But I was too busy
Far too busy with life's all too familiar, ever-present-never-stop-to-do-list
That I had happily incorporated
Into my new life
Too busy to come to see you
For, if I stopped my new life's new routine,
That you had given back to me five years ago yesterday,
If I have to stop the dance I am dancing now,
In order to come to your clinic,
Then it would affirm, give space, and allow
The dawn of a new unwanted reality
Lurking within me
On that day, our hi/hello visits of recent years past
Incredibly came to a halt.
Because on that day, a tiny but menacing purple bump,
A violaceous invader violating my epidermis,
Whispered to us that it had returned
Because on that day,
One single drop,
Just a solitary, matter-of-fact drop of blood
Sitting on the pathologist's slide-
And staring back up at you, whispering,
Told you what I already knew
Because, on that day,
My bone marrow betrayed my new story,
It whispered to you, in taboo-hushed languages
It announced to you, in an ages-old secret code
In which my DNA undressed itself to expose my inner truths to you
Unravelling; unfaithful to the bonds that were supposed
Supposed to last me for a lifetime
Now you are going to sit down with me
Glasses off, grimace in step
Your off-kilter rhythm when things are not just, not right, not so;
I remember this pang, this deep-down feeling,
From my original diagnosis day,
Unmistakable for what is to come next.
You are about to tell me-
That I may not be around for my first-born daughter's wedding,
Or for my husband's surprise-but-he-already-knows-retirement party
Because you have to tell me
That I have to dance with you again
That I have it again
Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm
B-P-D-C-N
From my vulnerable skin to my stained bone marrow
To my lymph nodes which are now crying out in pain, yearning for relief,
That it was in hibernation, a skin deep remission,
Past the mark of when it should come back
And now it is back, relapsed with a mission-
But, It's okay, doctor,
Yes, It is okay for you to shed a tear for me,
To think about my family back home and what they will say,
But now it is time for you to take six deep, slow, purposeful breaths of life,
Now you have to remember to tell me
That it's time that you have a plan for me,
Just like you had done before for me all of those years back,
That you are once again ready,
And that it is time to do that dance together again
Naveen Pemmaraju, MD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Leukemia at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. "I dedicate this poem to all patients and families out there, with a family member with blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN), a rare, life-threatening hematologic malignancy that affects the skin, lymph nodes, bone marrow, and blood. I have developed a clinical and research focus in this difficult-to-treat disease, and am working with many collaborators and teams to develop novel clinical trial therapies for patients with BPDCN."