I Drove My Friend to Chemo and Shit in the Back of My SUV

An essay about cancer, friendship, and showing up—even when everything goes spectacularly wrong.

There are certain moments in life when you don’t check your calendar. You don’t complain about the hour. You don’t calculate the inconvenience. You don’t wonder how you’re going to rearrange your day. When one of your closest friends asks you to drive her to chemo, you say yes. That’s it.

I thought my job that morning was to get my friend to chemo on time and make her laugh. I did both. I also shit in a grocery bag in the Johns Hopkins drop-off lane. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

When one of my girls asked if I would take her to Johns Hopkins for her first chemotherapy appointment, I didn’t hesitate—even though said appointment required leaving before dawn and navigating not one, but two metropolitan rush hours.

Chemo.

Not a manicure.

Chemo.

I coffeed up, kissed my toddlers goodbye while they were still sleeping, climbed into my SUV and headed out. Anything for my friend.

PC Natalie Fox Middleburg VA

I kept the conversation light on the drive. Jovial, even. Because laughter is the best medicine, and if there is one thing I can do in a crisis, it is provide inappropriate commentary and keep everyone from staring directly into the abyss. I am an excellent wingman in that regard.

Traffic, however, was not cooperating. It came in clumps.

Stop. Go. Stop. Crawl.

Our comfortable arrival window slowly disappeared until it became increasingly clear that we were going to be cutting it very close. Possibly late. For her first chemo appointment.

Again: chemo.

Not a manicure.

And then, about thirty miles outside Baltimore, the unthinkable happened. My coffee kicked in. Not in the pleasant, Oh good, I’m awake now kind of way. No. My intestines had apparently received an evacuation order.

At first, I said nothing. This was not about me. My friend was on her way to CHEMOTHERAPY. I was not about to burden a woman preparing to receive cancer treatment with breaking news from my lower gastrointestinal tract.

So I clenched.

And drove.

And clenched.

And prayed.

There was nowhere to pull off. And even if there had been, we didn’t have time. Every mile became more precarious. By the time we crossed into the city, I was doubled over behind the wheel, sweating, clenching muscles I didn’t know existed and becoming increasingly certain that one pothole stood between me and shitting all over the driver’s seat. This was no longer a warning. Elvis was approaching the exit.

Eventually I had to tell my friend. “I’m going to shit my pants.”

And because she is my friend, and because apparently cancer had not robbed her of her sense of humor, she started laughing. Which normally would have delighted me. Except laughter causes abdominal contractions. And there was already rear crowning. This was an emergency Chipotle baby, and it was coming whether I had a birth plan or not.

I somehow made it to Johns Hopkins and pulled directly into the hospital drop-off lane.

“GO,” I told her. “Go check in.” She looked at me. “I cannot park and walk in there with you. I will shit myself.”

There are moments in friendship when you have to know your role. Her emergency was chemo. Mine was colon-related. We parted ways. She ran inside. I stayed behind in my running SUV, breathing like a woman in transition.

Then I had approximately three seconds of clarity. And released one small puff of toxic gas I had heroically been protecting my friend from for the previous thirty miles. I needed a plan.

Immediately. And then I remembered. The potty. Way, way in the back of my SUV was one of those teeny-tiny toddler toilet seats I’d used during potty training.

I crawled into the cargo area. And because I am a mother—and therefore my car resembles a rolling episode of Let’s Make a Deal—I found a grocery bag on the floor. If Monty Hall had appeared at that moment and said, “Brandy, I’ll give you $500 if you can produce a toddler potty, a plastic grocery bag and something to wipe your ass with,” I would have cleaned up.

I MacGyvered the grocery bag onto the potty. Pulled down my pants. Squatted over a piece of plastic designed to support the buttocks of a 28-pound toddler and prayed it could withstand my postpartum plush bottom. And let it fly.

Sweet.

Merciful.

Jesus.

The relief was almost sensual.

There I was, crouched in the back of my SUV, pants around my ankles, taking an absolutely apocalyptic crap into a grocery bag while parked in the drop-off lane of one of the most prestigious hospitals in America.

People walked past on both sides.

Doctors.

Nurses.

Patients.

Families.

Perhaps a Nobel Prize winner.

Thankfully, my windows were tinted. Because apparently God does provide. When the storm finally passed, I assessed my resources. Toilet paper? Of course not. But this was a mom car. And mom cars contain things. I found a Sheetz napkin. One. Good enough.

I cleaned up, deposited the evidence into the grocery bag, tied it neatly at the top like a sack lunch from hell, pulled up my pants and emerged from the SUV looking like a perfectly normal, respectable adult woman. No one needed to know what had just occurred behind the tinted glass.

I calmly walked to the nearby trash can, dropped my bag of shame inside, got back into my still-running car and went to park. Crime scene cleared.

I eventually found my friend in chemo. There she was, sitting in that chair, facing something enormous and terrifying and completely beyond either one of our control. So naturally, I sat down beside her and told her the entire story.

The potty.

The grocery bag.

The crowning.

The Sheetz napkin.

The hospital drop-off lane.

All of it.

And she laughed.

Really laughed.

And suddenly, for a few minutes anyway, we weren’t sitting in a cancer center. We were just two girlfriends laughing about the fact that I had taken an emergency shit in the back of my SUV. And maybe that was exactly what we both needed. Because cancer is terrifying partly because there is so much you cannot fix for someone you love.

I couldn’t make her cancer disappear. I couldn’t take the chemo for her. I couldn’t promise her everything was going to be okay. But I could get up before dawn. I could drive. I could sit beside her. I could make her laugh when there wasn’t much to laugh about. And, apparently, I could take an emergency shit in the back of my SUV and give her something absolutely ridiculous to laugh about on her first day of chemo. Maybe that’s friendship.

You don’t always know what someone needs when they’re walking into one of the hardest days of their life. You just show up. Sometimes with coffee. Sometimes with inappropriate jokes. Sometimes simply by sitting beside them when life gets scary. And sometimes you show up with a grocery bag full of shit.

Anything for a friend.

Sincerely,

Me.