The Weirdest Bus Ride

Chemotherapy, a Brown Bag, and Oppressive Systems

About two years into my brother’s cancer treatment, I would bring him to the hospital for his chemo treatment once every other month. He was a terrible patient. He didn’t listen to doctors. He was stubborn. But, I loved him.

I remember the day that we both felt the crushing weight of unjust and scarce systems on our shoulders.

It was a hot sunny day in the middle of the dry season in Guatemala. The jacarandas were blooming. Some of the streets were covered in a flowery purple carpet. It was a beautiful day. I drove my brother to the General Hospital San Juan de Dios, a public hospital that offers free healthcare for those who can get in the system. I helped him walk over to the entrance and dropped him off in the waiting room of the cancer treatment section.

It smelled like a mixture of antibacterial soap, medicines, and sickness. Cancer has a very distinctive smell, at least that’s what it seems to me. My mother, my father, and my brother smelled the same once their cancer advanced to terminal stages.

As we entered the waiting room, people’s faces were sad. Most of them looked like ghosts occupying spaces in the realm of the living. Some of their bodies were nothing but skin and bones. Some had a smile on their face, a few were in good spirits, and others looked into the emptiness awaiting for beautiful death to show up to take them back to the Creator.

The experience of dropping my brother off was something I didn’t look forward to. It was hard to see his body slowly fading away. I knew, however, that he enjoyed our conversations during the drive. He asked deep questions about life, love, miracles, and God. And as someone who was deeply formed by Jesuit theology, he also talked about how oppressive and merciless the health care systems are through the Americas. He argued that the health care system is a sacrificial machine where all the sick, the poor, and the forgotten go to die.

After I left him in the waiting room, I went to my office just a few blocks away. I parked the car, and I received a phone call. It was him. “hey, I have huge favor to ask,” he said. I told him he could ask, and I would let him know whether I could help him. He proceeded to say: “They ran out of medicine. I need you to go get it, and it will be very expensive.” The hospital had run out of the medicines he needed for the chemo treatment. I was in shock. He needed the medicine to finish the treatment they had already started that day. He was already hooked to the IV going through the first chemical compounds his treatment required. This meant that he was at risk of not finishing that day’s chemo protocol. An incomplete protocol would do nothing to his cancer. The cancer, in return, could expand at a faster rate because it would become stronger and resistant to the treatment. So, I told him that I would get the medicine.

He sent me the name of the medicine, Cisplatin. He also gave me the doctor’s instructions on how and where to get it.

Photo by Yoel J Gonzalez on Unsplash

I took the bus. I went into a building on 6th avenue of Zone 4 in Guatemala City, at an address my brother had sent me per his doctor’s orders. I walked up the stairs to office 301. The door did not have a sign. It was just an ordinary brown door with a number on it. I opened the door and said: “I am here to buy chemotherapy treatment for a patient.” The receptionist asked who the patient was. “It is my brother,” I replied. Then she said, “how much do you need?” I replied with a short answer, “four, cisplatin.” She wrote the receipt up, and charged me the equivalent of $800. I was dumbfounded. It was expensive. I had just paid out of pocket a full month of my salary for the four small vials of medicine that my brother needed.

The receptionist left without saying another word. After a few minutes she came back with four small boxes. She put the boxes inside a brown paper bag. Then, she wrapped a thick black plastic bag around the medicine. Then, she added a thinner black nylon bag adding a third layer of protection. Finally, she put the tightly wrapped package inside another brown paper bag and said: “You cannot shake this, and no light can hit it until you are at the hospital.” So, I started my journey back to the hospital. I rode the bus while holding a brown bag of cisplatin for chemotherapy that was sold over the counter and with no record of it. It was sold by a sketchy pharmaceutical company in Guatemala City that profited from people like my brother and I. It was the weirdest bus ride I had ever had.

After I delivered the bag, I realized that my brother was one of the very few patients who finished his chemo protocol that day. Those who didn’t have somebody who could help them went home that day without their treatment, or even worse, with an unfinished treatment. That day, I realized that in this world medicine and healthcare are only for those who can afford it. All the patients at the hospital had been crushed by life in a world that cares very little about the most vulnerable.

For a moment, I wished all the stories about Jesus were true. I wished I could see him healing the sick for free. Can you believe that? for free! Without insurance!

As I look back to this story, I believe that God was there, hooked to an IV, getting chemo. If “the glory of God is humanity fully alive,” like St. Irenaeus said, the glory of God is also humanity at its most desperate and darkest places.