Poetry by Cancer Caregivers
;)
KAREN JOHNSON, RNP-C, is Family Nurse Practitioner and Nurse Manager at Wood River Health Services, a community health center in Rhode Island, and a 15-year survivor of lymphoma.
Submissions are welcome from oncologists, oncology nurses, and other cancer caregivers. E-mail only, please, to: [email protected], and include affiliation/title, address, and phone number, along with a photo, if available.
MORNING TEA
Lying in my bed, it's warm
I stretch, thinking, turn over
For just a few more minutes.
Tea, warm, a beautiful brown
Thinking of a cup of tea
Gets me started in my day.
When I was a child,
Tea was for sick people
Tea with honey for sore throats.
Forgotten in my college years
Cast aside for coffee,
Coffee needed to keep going.
Coffee brings more energy
More energy than tea, addictive
I must combat fatigue.
Fatigue of life—fight back with coffee
One cup, then two, then twelve each day
Just to keep going.
Coffee to extract every bit of energy
From my cells, twelve cups every day
Why am I so tired?
Cancer, they said, serious, widespread
Chemotherapy, radiation
So tired, coffee no longer satisfies.
Twelve cups of coffee, so pitiful, so sad
A long missed diagnosis
What I did to just keep going!
No more coffee!
I don't like the memory of how I
Whipped my fatigued body.
Awakening now, stiff, sore, older
But cancer free
I take time for gratitude.
Morning tea, warm, comforting
Awakens my spirit gently
as I travel through my day.
Remembering morning tea
Remembering days of coffee
Treasuring these days of tea.
