Creative Supplement: The Cancer Patient Experience—New Poetry and Prose

I was ten years old, and I had been given a big responsibility: to help my mother drive our black Plymouth Fury (the one with push-button automatic transmission) from Mobile to New Orleans. It was about 150 miles, but seemed a lot more—and I didn’t actually drive any, but navigated, slowly untangling the maze of coloured lines (this was before interstate highways) spread across the road map in my lap. Mother always said I did well—as I recall, she only had to pull over once or twice to help me solve some red or blue riddle—and we cruised westward through the morning from hamlet to crossroad to country town, Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana. We were going to visit her younger brother, who was a patient in the world-famous Oschner Cancer Clinic.