My Favorite Cancer Moments (inspired by Tig Notaro): Garrison Keillor Marks the End of the Red Devil:
So before I get to Garrison Keillor-- who lives in Minnesota and Mayo Clinic is the BEST hospital in Minnesota, if not the U.S.-- I'm going to tell you that people with Cancer get to be massively Ultra-sounded. I'm like Ultra-sounded from head to toe (literally) now.
I'm going to count the belly Ultra-sounds from way back when I was pregnant. Now I can add:
1) Heart Echocardiagram (suspected heart damage after Red Devil #1)
2) Leg Ultrasound (suspected Deep Vein Thrombosis after Red Deveil #4)
3) And of course breast and side Ultrasound during diagnosis of the breast cancer.

Let's just say I know the inner workings of my guts far more than I ever thought possible. Luckily I was negative on all the ultrasounds -- except for that pesky initial diagnosis of breast cancer.

Now, on to the story. So I walked into Mayo's Gonda 10 South Desk to sign in to #4 of 4 (the last!) of my Red Devil Chemotherapy infusions. (Next is 4 of Taxol, which supposedly isn't as terrible-- but does require you to immerse your fingers in frozen peas to keep from losing your fingernails). I walk through the lobby and there's an older man sitting on the edge of the seat grouping frowning into a mac laptop in a way that pushes his glasses down his scrunched nose.
And I was all like "that looks like Garrison Keillor". And I thought, no way is GK here in Mayo on the one afternoon I come for chemo. I looked again (blatantly breaking the "lets not look to closely at the others on the cancer floor" rule) and he sure did look like Garrison Keillor, but I brushed on by and promptly forgot. I whipped out my Samsung Tablet and started reading on my Kindle App, effectively closing off the world so I wouldn't get nervous about impending Red Devil.

Then my mom walks in and is all "did you just hear them say 'Garrison Keillor' to the B Door?" and I had to say "Nope, completely in my emotional oystershell here, but I did think I saw Garrison Keillor when I first walked in."

So just to make my last Red Devil infusion extra-special, I got to see the inner workings of my leg veins and Garrison Keillor squinting into his Mac laptop in the lobby. And of course, during the infusion, the popsicle. What more could a cancer-girl ask for?