doctor standing over a man about to go into a PET scan

Cancer in Seven Rhyming Quatrains

Something different this time around. I mean, we have to shake things up now and again, right? Enjoy.

The Big “C” is what they call it.
But there’s no word big enough.
Cancer is a juggernaut, no small bit,
Every day is more and more tough.

I walked into the doctor’s office, unaware,
expecting a simple diagnosis of ulcer, bleeding.
Unfortunately, things ended shaped like a pear -
talk about a severe misreading!

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Lymphoma – that’s what the news bore,
these doctors had to be wrong!
I mean, it’s not like they haven’t been before,
For me, their record of diagnoses wasn’t strong.

So I rolled inside that big metal donut,
The PET scan, the ultimate anxiety machine.
Besides being a huge pain in the butt
literally and figuratively, everything it could mean.

No matter the results, whatever they showed,
I told myself I’d face it with my usual pluck.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t what the signs bode.
Ugh, of course it is – I don’t have that kind of luck!

The treatment began while I was still detained,
Chemo and a hospital stay while I sat and stewed.
The treatment wasn’t that bad, not as pained.
Worse yet was eating that crap they called hospital food.

Cancer, something no one should ever endure,
when it comes, it’s like a tornado.
Now I wait, counting every day until “cured,”
Waiting for the end of this Gong Show.

-Daniel P. Malito, amateur poet.
Talk soon.

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