I see a lot of things at the clinic. Some of them are medical in nature, some others are human in nature. Perhaps I should clarify (yes, please do!).
In the clinic there are about 28 "chairs" - arranged in pods of 4 per section. There are also four private rooms with beds, generally used for a patient going through a first-time procedure or needing special care that is better served in a separate area (I had my first IVIG treatment in a private room in case I had an adverse reaction to the initial infusion).
On this particular day, my chair was right next to one of the private rooms. The room was already occupied by the time I arrived for my session, and the door was closed, so I couldn't see too much of what was going on (not that it was any of my business). But I could see a guard periodically going in and out. About half way through my treatment, the door opened and two guards walked out accompanying a patient. They were holding him by each arm - restraining, not supporting. And aside from the mask on the patient's face, he was handcuffed and wearing the drab garb of a local correctional facility. As they walked past me, all avoiding eye contact with anyone else, I was struck by three thoughts.
- Both guards were packing heat, (had handguns in their holsters), so this person must be doing time for something more serious than check-kiting or speeding tickets.
- I was intrigued by the idea that the same system that is charged with the social responsibility of administering justice through detention, was also making sure that the detainee was receiving proper healthcare - coincidentally, from a world-class oncology facility.
- But the irony of the moment didn't escape me. Here was a young man, incarcerated in a physical prison for some crime and also in-cancerated (essentially a prisoner of his own body) dealing with some form of blood-borne cancer (that is what this clinic specializes in). I'm not here to judge him or the system, but merely to observe a scintilla of civility amidst the cold and sterile colliding worlds of prison and a chemotherapy infusion clinic.
