The People I met over Memorial Day Weekend, 2025

May 25, 2025

So here we are, barely a breath past my last post, and I’m already back at the keyboard. Blame it on reflection, or maybe the steroids. Either way, I realized I missed something important. Last time, I was busy cataloging the bureaucratic process, the exhaustion, the emotional static of chemo round one, and I skimmed right past the good. That’s the trouble with trying to write from inside the storm, you tend to miss the people holding umbrellas.

This is me circling back, as I often do. The truth is, I’m not done telling the story of the weekend. Not even close. I started writing this post at 3:30 am, it is now a bit after 7 am. No notes on this one. This is all memory and from the heart. I may have captured some of these items on paper, but I missed it in my previous post, and I felt compelled to acknowledge this and fix the situation. So here we are...

What I didn’t capture in the last post were the people. The ones who floated in and out of my room, who handled me like I was one of many, because I am one of many, but still left something behind. In a hallway of beeping monitors and sleepless nights, they made me feel less like a diagnosis and more like a human.

The floor around me was never quiet. Somewhere nearby, a woman wandered the halls, lost in her own timeline, gently coaxed back to her room by nurses who didn’t blink. An older man barked angry protests at a world he couldn’t quite remember. In the room next to mine, a man watched cable TV at full blast from 4 a.m. until long after I’d given up trying to sleep. If you ever want to know the full weekday lineup of cable television, just ask me.

Somewhere inside all that noise, there was calm. There were moments of grace, of connection, of clarity. Here are a few of them.

The Nurse from Sierra Leone

She shared her story as she moved through the room, checking vitals, handing me my evening medications, answering a call from the hallway, all with the calm precision of someone who’s done this a thousand times. There was nothing rushed in her manner, but everything she did had purpose.

Born in Sierra Leone, she spent her teenage years in the UK and now works here in the States. Her journey has been layered, across continents, cultures, and expectations. She told me about going back to Sierra Leone after years abroad. The pace there, once second nature, now felt alien. She had adapted to urgency, efficiency, a life of tight schedules and structured days. On her return, the slower rhythm of her homeland didn’t soothe her, it unsettled her.

There was no bitterness in her voice. No regret. But there was reflection. A quiet searching of her soul. I could sense she was smiling as she spoke with me, even though her mouth was covered with a mask. Her eyes gave her away. She was kind, grounded, but I could sense the complexity underneath. Like she wasn’t sure if the woman she had become was the one she set out to be.

Then she said something that stuck with me.

“We have to trust each other, otherwise, this doesn’t work.”

Trust. It’s something she’s learned over years, living, working, adapting. Something she chose to share with me, not as advice, but as a truth earned through experience.

We talked about that word for a while. How we have to believe others are doing what’s right. That most people don’t wake up trying to hurt you. That assuming bad intent can slowly build a wall between you and everyone else.

It reminded me of something I learned in my government leadership courses, “assume noble intent.” It’s easy to forget that in high-stakes environments, or when you’re tired, or sick, or overwhelmed. But here I was, being reminded of it again, by a nurse balancing a dozen tasks and still choosing to see the good.

She can’t live in both worlds, Sierra Leone and the West, but maybe trust is the common bridge she walks between them. The urgency of her adopted home, the warmth of her roots, the structure and the softness. In this moment, she offered me more than care. She offered perspective.

To trust the system. To trust the people around me. To trust that I’m not alone in this journey. I believed her.

The Faithful Phlebotomist

She was in and out in under ten minutes, but her presence lingered. From Côte d'Ivoire, soft-spoken and steady, she handled the needlework with precision and grace.

“Stay positive,” she said, smiling. “Believe in God’s plan.” Then, with quiet confidence, “Christians find Christians.”

Simple. Profound. Not a sermon, just a reminder. Faith recognizes faith. Struggle recognizes struggle. Sometimes, even in a hospital full of strangers, you find someone tuned to the same quiet frequency.

The Seasoned Oncology Nurse

In my last post, I may have poked a little fun at her war with the new hospital software. I joked that the computer system was winning. I regret that now. She deserves more credit than that.

This woman has been working in oncology longer than many of the staff around her have been alive. She sees things before the numbers do. She notices what machines miss. Yes, she fumbles through the digital charting, but she can read a face in ways no flowchart ever will.

I still believe in progress, in accountability, in tracking the work. But we need to remember that not everyone adapts to change on the same timeline. Not everyone should have to. There’s value in wisdom earned the hard way, even if it comes with a side of frustration at a blinking cursor.

The New Nurse from Appalachian Ohio

Young, full of energy, and still fresh enough to believe this work can change people. It can. She reminded me of that.

She talked with Maria and shared that she wasn’t sure if this was her long-term path. “But I love the people here,” she said.

Maria gave her the kind of mentorship advice I wish someone had told me early on. “Try other roles. See different places. Don’t decide too early. Let your career surprise you.” Maria has an eye for talent and recognized this young nurses bedside talent. Maria slipped her a business card, but not in a normal recruitment manner, but followed it up with call me it you would just like to see what other opportunities are out there for you.

I could see her absorbing it, filing it away for later. She’ll do well, wherever she ends up.

The Phlebotomist and the Baby Feet

One phlebotomist, while wrapping up yet another blood draw, paused, looked down, and told me I had beautiful feet. “They look like baby feet,” she said, as if that were a perfectly ordinary observation. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with that information. I mean, what exactly qualifies feet as “baby-like” in a good way? Is it the shape? The softness? The apparent lack of hard mileage? I’ve been through chemo, bone pain, biopsies, and enough scans to light up a small city, but apparently, my feet are out here living their best, unbothered life. She meant it as a compliment, and I accepted it with a confused but polite nod, filed it away under “oddly wholesome things said to me in a hospital.”

Now, I already know how some of you think. I see you out there, raising your eyebrows, pretending to scroll past this part while secretly wondering, Wait… just how baby-like are these feet? Let me stop you right there. Don’t be a weirdo. This is not that kind of blog. If you’re genuinely that curious, you can slide into my DMs like the gremlin you are and Venmo me $25 per photo. Good feet pics don’t grow on trees, folks, this chemo journey’s got to fund itself somehow.

The Doctor Who Half-Listens

I wrote about him in the last post. He walked into the room before I’d even had a chance to set down my bag. I hadn’t tucked my folded weekend clothes into the drawer yet. I hadn’t looked around, caught my breath, or even had a moment to brace for what was coming. But he was already mid-sentence, efficient, confident, and clearly on his own timetable. He had rounds to finish and a treatment plan ready to go.

He wasn’t cruel or careless. He isn’t the villain in the story. He was a professional doing what he is trained to do: move quickly, assess the data, make decisions. He was confident, practiced, and clearly experienced. But in his rush to treat the condition, he bypassed the person.

That person was me.

Within two minutes, he told me I would be put on insulin. Just like that. No explanation, no context, and no space for my voice. I was still standing there with my bag in my hand, trying to process the words. It was a jarring moment, not because of the insulin itself, but because of how quickly the door closed on conversation.

He had a protocol in mind. What he didn’t have, or didn’t ask for, was my perspective. My history. My progress. The real-time evidence of what had been working for me. That’s what threw me off more than anything.

His experience absolutely matters. He has seen things I haven’t, treated cases far more complex than mine, and carries a medical understanding I respect. But I have been living in this body every single day. I know how it reacts, what worked, and what didn’t. I know what it feels like when something is off, sometimes before a lab result can confirm it. That insight isn’t secondary. It’s essential.

He needed to hear what brought me to this point, not just what he thought he could do for me based on paperwork.

Some things he heard, but not fully. When I mentioned I was on medicine for shingles, he documented it, but misunderstood it as treatment for tumor pain. He missed the fact that it was prescribed to manage the nerve pain at the shingles site, not for the pain in my abdomen. More importantly, he didn’t register that my oncologist had asked me to stay on a specific antiviral medication, even though I was clear when I said said this to him. That didn’t make it into the treatment plan at all.

I only realized it the next day, after checking my online chart and noticing it was missing from his notes and after the hospital pharmacy failed to deliver the antiviral. I had to flag it. I had to fix it.

That’s the cost of not being fully heard. It’s not always dramatic, but it is consequential. Small miscommunications lead to missed doses. Assumptions result in altered care. If you aren’t double-checking, things slip. and while the system around you may be full of experts, you are the only one living with the outcome.

That moment reminded me again that being a patient isn’t passive. It’s active. Relentless, often invisible work. It means knowing when to speak up, when to push back, and when to ask the same question a third time because the answer still doesn’t sit right.

You don’t have to be loud. You don’t have to have the perfect words. But you do have to stay present. Because decisions are made quickly. Speak up. Ask the question. Say the thing you’re unsure you’re “allowed” to say. The moment you stop participating in your own care, the shape of it starts shifting without you.

But here’s the truth I hold just as tightly: you don’t have to do it alone.

I am lucky enough to have Maria by my side. She brings calm into chaos, clarity into confusion, and when needed, a sharp call out when I start pretending everything’s fine just to keep things easy for everyone else. She knows when I’m glossing over things, and she gently but firmly steers me back toward honesty, with my team and with myself.

Her presence reminds me that strength isn't just found in solo resilience. It’s also found in connection, in partnership, in letting someone else step in when your grip gets weak.

Let’s transition back to the insulin story. The next day, everything made more sense. Once the ICE protocol started, I learned that some of the chemo drugs I’m now receiving can spike blood sugar to dangerous levels. In that context, the insulin made sense, not as a replacement for my previous medication, but as a temporary support to help my body manage the intensity of treatment and recover.

I understood it eventually, but those explanations came later. That delay matters. Without context upfront, I spent two days feeling confused, dismissed, and out of control. That emotional toll builds quietly, but it builds.

So if you ever find yourself in a hospital room, bag still in hand, unsure of what’s coming next, remember this: you have the right to be heard. You deserve to be part of the conversation. You deserve an explanation, not just a decision. You bring something to the table too, and your lived experience is part of the medical process.

This is your body. Your fight. Your story. Hold your place in it.

One of Many, But Not Forgotten

I was one patient among many this weekend. One voice in the middle of a floor buzzing with alarms, footsteps, and the occasional daytime talk show blaring at full volume. I didn’t expect much beyond IV bags, blood work, and restless hours. What I found was something better.

I found people. Their stories. Their lessons. Their faith. Their trust. I found my voice matters.

This place isn’t quiet. It isn’t easy. But it’s full of people trying to make healing possible. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes without even knowing it.

It turns out, between the chaos, the chemo, and the loud cable TV in the next room, it’s the unexpected kindness, and weird foot compliments, that remind you you’re still human.

As we head into Memorial Day, I’m reminded that trust and service often go hand in hand. So many gave their lives believing in something greater than themselves, in country, in mission, in one another. May we honor that sacrifice by doing our part to live with integrity, compassion, and yes with trust.

This weekend, I’m remembering the fallen, especially the men who served alongside my father in the 173rd Airborne, and those I had the honor to serve with during my own six years in the U.S. Army. Those who stayed in the fight long after I left the service and who never made it home.

The courage of all those who laid down their lives for this Country, laid the foundation for the freedoms we so often take for granted. Their sacrifice echoes across generations. May we strive to live lives worthy of that sacrifice, not just on Memorial Day, but every single day.

While this weekend is not about those who have served or are still serving, I want to say this clearly: I see you. I remain deeply grateful to every one of you who has worn the uniform and to those who continue to stand watch today. Your service, your sacrifice, and your quiet strength make this life possible, for me, for all of us. Thank you.