In early 2009, nine short months after we got married, my husband was diagnosed with cancer.  From February of that year until his final cancer treatment on April 24 [yes I know the exact day], we were at MD Anderson in Houston, Texas beating cancer’s butt.

We traveled back and forth for many weeks from Ardmore to Houston until Keith got his official treatment plan and start date.  Once the plan was ready to put into action, we were more or less residents of Houston for the next 6-7 weeks.  We began our little adventure in a small, extended-stay motel just blocks from the medical center.  Keith felt pretty good and wanted to walk to the medical center until he couldn’t any more.  We went to the grocery store and bought a little food, snack stuff, drinks and garbage bags.  Scented garbage bags apparently.

During the last three weeks of our stay, we were fortunate enough to be in a fully-furnished apartment.  Houston has a wonderful church ministry there that has several churches that go together to provide cancer patients with “affordable” and nice housing for their stay at the medical center.  I found out about it late so we only were able to utilize the opportunity for our last three weeks, but those were the weeks where Keith really needed some place quiet and more like home to recover.  The last few weeks of anyone’s cancer treatments are usually the hardest and Keith was no exception.

When we moved to the little apartment, we packed up everything from the extended stay and took with us, to include the big box of scented trash bags.  I continued to be nurse, maid and wife, which included taking out the garbage.  No big deal.  It had to be done, happy to do it.

Months later, we are back home, Keith is healing well and thoughts of our 3 months in Houston are beginning to seem very distant, until one day…..  I just happened to be in the kitchen when it was time to change out the garbage so I whipped out a new garbage bag and WHAMMO it hit me.  The smell of the “scented” garbage bag.  OMG!  It was the same scented garbage bag smell as the scented bags in Houston.  All at once I got nauseous and was right back in Houston in the middle of a very difficult time.   My mouth started sweating and I felt sick all over.  A cold sweat broke out on my forehead.  My palms got sweaty.  I backed away and had to get some fresh air.

Now Keith is the grocery shopper most of the time in our house so I found him quickly and said, PLEASE no more scented garbage bags.  He got a very curious look on his face and I simply said, reminds me of our time in Houston.  That was all I needed to say and he agreed, no more scented garbage bags.

Now here I am in 2014, I am going through some drawers and throwing some stuff away and I need a garbage bag.   You guessed it; apparently we still had some of those “scented” bags.  I whipped the bag out of the box and shook it open and WHAMMO, here we go again.  Houston, I think we have a problem.