the best thing since sliced bread

Today I sit at the cancer center, hooked up to receive blood for a blood transfusion from a person I have never met. The soothing ticking over of the machine comforts me somehow. It's measured and it's steady; following protocol. My senses are all at once nauseous and clean, taken over by exhaustion and can I please just shut my eyes for a bit?

Last week Miss J explained the infusaport to me. She hauled me over the other side of the room, taking me past the brown padded chairs, and the dark grey ones with the wooden levers right up to the chair which Doris sat in. 

Doris said I could take a peek at her port. For a $10 fee. 

And after she was hilarious and witty and at probably around seventy years old, she seemed happy enough with it. 

Afterward, I saw Huz had been talking to the wrinkled beauty next to her. White hair and gentle, she had asked Huz if I was worried about having it put in. She told him that she had fought against having the port for a long time, 'but it's the best thing since sliced bread'.

Back at my own chair, I looked across, and she waved.

Thanks Doris and sweet old lady!

Yesterday the port went in, and today in goes the blood from a stranger. I'm feeling a little more awake 3 hours into the transfusion, but it's best not to get squirmy thinking about this blood, this life, this gift from a stranger.

I am more than blessed.