There are so many special nooks and crannies up on the children’s cancer floors.  This area for the littlest victims of cancer is a state of the art center when it comes to medicine and science, but it’s also a place where a child can play basketball on a real-life size court.  They can huddle in a computer center and play the latest games, or find a good book and snuggle up in a comfortable chair and read the day away while they fight like crazy to beat cancer.

Some of them are so small, they don’t really know why they need to be connected to bags of chemotherapy.  That word, I promise you is not something that belongs in the vocabulary of a 4 year old.

So when the door opened in front of me and out walked a tiny little cancer victim dressed in hospital issued PJ’s, it was only by reflex that I said “Hi.”

He wasn’t alone.  An even smaller little “supporter” made tracks behind him and then the adult on the team followed the two little guys.  It was quite the picture.  Turns out the boys were cousins.  One visiting the other and they decided they were going to go for a walk around the floor.  The 4 year old was connected to his T-stand and the medicine bag with the slow drip was doing it’s thing, while these two little pals, holding hands, slowly walked at a pace not meant for little people.  They should have been running around that floor: chasing each other.  Instead it was a step by step effort so as not to get tangled in all the tubing.  “Dad” made sure he stayed close enough if he was needed, but far enough away, so the kids felt empowered to walk the walk alone.

As they made their way past me, heading back to the room, they stopped at a dispenser to clean their hands with some alcohol based cleanser.  The little patient squeezed the dispenser while the his little pal just watched, wondering what this procedure was all about.  Then he leaned down to show him how a person kills germs by rubbing hands together with this odd jelly like substance.  And they disappeared back into the hospital room.

Two cousins….so small, so wrong to have to learn the ways of cancer world.