Kindness

The people you meet just surprised you sometimes. I was sitting in the breast-clinic’s waiting room, waiting for my turn. I was scheduled to have a fine-needle biopsy on that day. A middle aged lady was sitting next to me. We were both wearing hospital gowns. She looked at me with huge eyes. “What you here for?” she asked. I told her. She looked surprised, but then she said kindly, “Don’t you worry, dear. It’s going to be alright.”

“They took one of mine, and I’m alright. See..” she pointed out where her breast had been. She had had a mastectomy. “Don’t you worry. You’ll be fine.”

We had a chat and I found out that she migrated to Australia as a refugee 40 years ago. She was from Egypt but was actually Greek.

The nurse called her and that ended our chat. She followed the nurse, grumbling all the way. It was clear that to her, as I also knew, the treatment for cancer was not a walk in the park. She was obviously scared and worried about her own health, but she took the time to comfort me. That made her a very wonderful person to me.