The waiting room of 15e floor of pavilion C of the CHUM, largely glazed, offers a beautiful perspective on the city. Upholstered armchairs are comfortable. Everything is modern, efficient and well kept. Silence usually reigns there. Patient calls are made on screen. Everyone is on their own. The last arrivals fill out their form. Patients there generally wait about 30 minutes while the pharmacy prepares their medication. Patients know they will receive excellent care from highly competent, attentive and courteous medical staff. We feel confident, medically speaking. It’s a lot.
All the same… We inevitably feel a certain coldness that is entirely clinical, entirely medical, sitting in this room. It’s inevitable. We are not at the hotel. Receiving chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatments is not a visit to the hairdresser. When we are entitled to it, we know what we are fighting, but not always the outcome that awaits us. Each case is different. Each patient handles the situation in their own way. But let’s say we’d rather be somewhere else, if our health allowed it.
Last Wednesday, at the beginning of the afternoon, sitting reading my newspaper to pass the time, I suddenly heard a very pretty, very soft and very pleasant melody, played on the guitar with great talent. It was the kind of melody you would listen to in the evening, comfortably lying down, to relax. At first I thought it was a recording, but surprisingly clear. It was rather a man of a certain age, as we often say, who had brought his guitar.
The coldness of the room has disappeared. The place filled with a human warmth that I cannot describe in words. I am sorry. I don’t know what the other patients felt. But this sweet melody, played with such finesse, comforted me and made me more serene. Especially since it was so unexpected in such a place. That a patient takes the trouble to bring his guitar to cheer up his peers, who would have thought! I thanked the talented musician.
Except that it was nothing. Late in the afternoon, walking through the empty waiting room, I noticed the guitar case lying on an armchair. Turning around, I saw this great gentleman again, this second-hand guitarist. Here he explains to me that he is not a patient, thank God for him, but a volunteer who accompanies a patient. To make up for the long hours of waiting, he simply brings his guitar.
This gentleman, whose name I did not have the presence of mind to ask, devotes several days a week to transporting and accompanying patients on a voluntary basis, and not only to the CHUM. At the same time, it offers, in all sobriety and delicacy, a sweet melody to waiting patients. He was, I think, surprised that I took the trouble to thank him, to inform me about him. He expected nothing from anyone, not the slightest recognition: only the end of the treatments of the patient he was accompanying.
At the dawn of the Holidays, it is with pleasure that I share this moment of human sweetness, all musical, to underline the work of the volunteers, particularly those who devote themselves to it regularly, whole days, of year. At the CHUM, many volunteers, women and men, in their 60s and over, offer various services and little attentions. Sometimes to show the right way, sometimes to help with the use of check-in terminals, sometimes to offer a coffee or an apple juice.
Even if you’re not thirsty, when you’re alone waiting for your treatment, being offered a drink, with a smile on your face, feels good. Hearing a sweet melody, at the right time, is happiness. And when these volunteers are seniors, whose only compensation is the satisfaction of helping, then these small gestures make us very grateful.