My Boss Said My Chemo Treatment "Isn't All That Bad" So I Put The Evidence In Her Hand

[00:00:01] Hey Waffle Gang, I do hope you're well. My name is Mark and today we're checking out some more Reddit Stories. And if you do love a Reddit Story, why not consider? Hit that like, subscribe, maybe that notification bell too. And let's crack on with today's first story.

[00:00:16] Now our first story comes from Traumatize Them Back from Montgomery Zeth. Now before we do get into it, there is talk of cancer and chemo within the story. So if you don't want to skip it, please feel free to do so. Timestamps are always down in the description and along the timeline below. Thank you.

[00:00:32] It's titled, Boss Says My Chemo Treatment Isn't As Bad As All That. I put the evidence in her hand. A few years ago, I needed a course of chemotherapy and was warned to expect all the usual side effects. Nausea, fatigue, aches and pains, and of course, hair loss.

[00:00:52] Well, after the first couple of rounds, I was feeling fairly good. Not too nauseous, which had weirdly been my main worry, as I hate throwing up. Vomit free since 93, etc, etc. My gums had begun to hurt though. I was starting to notice my hair was beginning to get, shall we say, a little bit loose. I'd noticed a bit more on my comb and a little more in the shower drain than usual.

[00:01:18] Now, I'd usually just put this down to regular old male pattern boldness paranoia, MPDP, but I reckon the drugs were beginning to take effect. Well, a couple of rounds further on, I really knew it. I felt pretty old and creaky. I had mouth ulcers and my appetite had vanished. Actually, that's not quite true. I occasionally craved a BLT sandwich, squashed wafer thin, and chilled to near sub-zero temperature.

[00:01:44] I asked the doctor if this meant anything, and she said yes. It now means I want a BLT for lunch. Helpful. However, my hair was still in place, but I could still feel it was losing the battle to cling on, even so. Now, I worked in a small office, and my boss, Carla, fake name, was a woman in her 40s who was, shall we say, kind of self-involved.

[00:02:07] She would talk incessantly about herself, and the theme was always the same, how hard her life was, and the many insufferable situations she had to deal with. And being forced to listen to a lot of these problems, we all came to the conclusion that most of these insufferable situations were, A. Basically, just run-of-the-mill problems everyone has to deal with, and B. Largely, self-inflicted.

[00:02:31] And when it came to work, no matter what the issue was, or how it needed to be fixed, it always came back to her, and how the situation made her feel. Any given meeting was at least 40% discussing how the issue affected her personally, and deleteriously. What we all wanted to do was just get the job done. It got pretty annoying from time to time, but apart from the occasional inward sigh at her behavior, I powered through. Until I told her about my upcoming chemo.

[00:03:01] At first, she seemed cool with everything. I'd take three days off every couple of weeks to stay on a ward for the treatment, and I'd be back in the office the remaining time. No problem. Good stuff. I told a couple of the other people in the office too, but I didn't talk about it much. I didn't really want to get labeled as the cancer guy, and as the subject's a bit of a downer. I didn't want to bum people out needlessly. Everybody's got something going on in their lives, right? But then Carla's attitude began to change.

[00:03:30] I began to notice odd passive-aggressive comments she would make mentioning my treatment, or me having to visit the doctor. Not much at first, but they began to grow in frequency. And then after a few days, my boss friend came over to have a quiet conversation with me. She's just finding it very hard to come to terms with your news, she said. It's really affecting her deeply. I was pretty nonplussed at this, but asked the friend whether my situation was all bringing up some stuff from the past, or maybe a family member was ill too.

[00:04:00] But she just replied, No, no, nothing like that. She's just a really sensitive person. I told the friend that, well, my boss didn't really need to come to terms with anything, because it was me having the treatment and not her, and that she shouldn't worry about it. And then I went off for a long, therapeutic crap to calm down. Over the next week, my boss's behavior got more passive-aggressive towards me, and slowly a thought began to percolate through my mind. Surely she's not jealous, right?

[00:04:29] Surely she can't think I'm pulling focus in some way from her, and now she's upset because she's not able to trump chemotherapy. Because that would be insanely shallow, right? Right? But the more her behavior went on, and the more I thought about it, well, won't you eliminate the impossible, as Sherlock Holmes said, right? So things finally came to a head of hair about two weeks later. I was at my desk, but feeling fairly rough by this point.

[00:04:58] I'd finished a round of chemo two days earlier, and my skin was looking pretty gray. My teeth felt wobbly, but my hair was still there. But it felt like it was just kind of resting on top of my head, rather than anchored there. A colleague noticed I looked under the weather and kindly asked me if I was okay. And I replied, I'll be alright, thanks, but I reckon I won't have much hair this time next week. Well, my boss happened to pass by at that moment, and I could see her face screw up as I said it. She then chipped in.

[00:05:27] Oh, come on! I don't think the chemotherapy is as bad as all that, is it? Now, had this come from a friend, I probably would have let it go. As with my close friends, I'd make some pretty similar and extremely dark jokes myself. And so had they. But that's what you do with close friends, right? But I was not close with my boss. But something just collapsed soggily in the center of me when she said it. And before I knew what I was doing, I'd stood up and gone over to her, blocking her exit before she could leave the room.

[00:05:55] I'm not sure, Carla, I said. I'm not sure if chemotherapy is as bad as all that. Why don't we find out? And as I said it, I reached up to the back of my head and casually yanked out a giant fistful of hair. Now, my hair at the time was fairly short, but pretty curly. So I had a good amount in my hand. About the size of an enormous orange. The back of my head suddenly had a huge bald patch, of the type you usually see in a home haircut catastrophe sort of way, when the clipper guard falls off.

[00:06:25] Put your hand across the back of your head now. Imagine all of that suddenly gone, and you're in the right ballpark. I held the massive hair up in the air for a second, then looked at my boss again. What do you think, Carla? I said calmly as I plonked it down in her quivering hand. Let me know. And I turned and left the now supernaturally quiet office. Carla just looked at the triple in her hand as if it was a grenade. Now, not even a long therapeutic crap was going to sort this one out.

[00:06:54] So I took an early lunch and stomped out to find a place that could do me a freezing cold squashed BLT sandwich with extra mayo. When I got back to the office, the HR rep was waiting near my desk. Uh-oh. I smiled, sat down, and she came over. There was a pregnant pause. She took a breath. A couple of your colleagues let me know what happened with Carla earlier, she began. I see, I replied casually. Because as we all know, HR is not your friend.

[00:07:23] They may say they're your friend and that they're there to protect your rights, but really they're just there to ensure the company can treat everybody shittily in a non-actionable way. Okay, rant over and back to the story. Bearing in mind what just happened, the HR lady continued, would like to offer you paid leave for the remainder of your treatment. Would that be okay with you? Now, bearing in mind I had at least three more cycles of treatment, lasting six more weeks, my answer was a carefully considered,

[00:07:50] yes, yes, I believe that would be alright with me, Miss HR Lady. Me and my bald patch walked out of the office ten minutes later and went home. My girlfriend and I called our friends over that evening for some beers and curry, and we all got drunk and shaved my head. Though I looked weird. I was pleasantly surprised to find my head didn't have too many weird bumps on it. Even my occipital bum was pretty small. Google it just for fun. It was a good evening, especially when I decided it'd be hilarious to tell my male friends how grateful I was

[00:08:20] that they had all agreed to shave their heads too in solidarity. I handed the clippers to my friend Mike, who had dark, shoulder-length hair, and did that magnificent bastard pause for only two seconds before trying to plug the clippers in. I managed to wrestle them off him, laughing my ass off. My girlfriend then told me, no more beers for OP. Boo. Anyway, so cut to the chase. The rest of the treatment went well. Everything went into remission, and thankfully stayed in remission ever since. So job done.

[00:08:50] Well done, medical team. I took the time off, got through the treatment, and also managed to find myself a new job at the same time before I had to return. Meanwhile, back at the office, Carla Starr was on the wane. Word had gotten around about her. Behavior. She tried her usual tricks, how she'd been misunderstood, and how upset she was about the whole thing, but people were noticeably colder towards her. According to my colleagues, and people had started to refer to her as Hairball behind her back.

[00:09:19] The name stuck. I finally returned to work, only to hand my notice in and leave. On my outs, I tried to be as classy as possible with Carla. I thanked her for the opportunity, and wished her well for the future. She didn't say much. I gave her a card, and a small token of my appreciation. I told her to not bother unwrapping it till she got home. It was a DVD of a popular 1979 anti-war musical directed by Milos Forman, starring John Savage and Treat Williams.

[00:09:49] You've still got Google open for when you looked up occipital bun, right? I'll look this one up too. My hair grew back. I returned to my ordinary, regular run-of-the-mill pattern boldness paranoia. The new job was pretty terrific, and even now, I still like ice-cold, wafer-thin BLTs. OP talking about their wafer-thin sandwiches, I love a wafer-thin grated cheese sandwich. Put it all in, and then literally just pound it down into the side so it's flat as a pancake. Oh, it's so good.

[00:10:19] And I think we should also say, fuck cancer. But the way OP dealt with that, let's not play it down. It must have been fucking awful to hear someone say that to you, regardless if you're a master of the arts of dark humor. Hearing some random say that to you at the same time, it's got to be painful. So I'm glad that you called her out, and hopefully given her a life lesson. And I'm so glad that the chemo worked for you, OP. Thank you so much for sharing your story. But just talking about the dark humor as well, when my dad was on chemo

[00:10:48] through his mesothelioma, we talked about like the various potential side effects that could come with it, the losing hair, the nausea, everything that came with it. And we talked about losing hair because my dad, he had like super thick, like super thick hair. His hair grew so quickly. And me and him and my brothers, I don't know if this is a dark joke or not, but it always did make us chuckle between us. My dad, my dad himself as well, you know, we wouldn't have messed around if it was hurting him, of course. But we always liked the idea

[00:11:17] of a Bob Roswig, which always gave us a chuckle to ourselves. But what do you guys make of this situation? How do you think OP dealt with it? I think fucking fair play. Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below. And let's move on to another story. And that was an interesting one as well. So I thought I'd look for another story within the same subreddit. Traumatize them back, by the way. And this one's from a deleted user that says substitute teacher

[00:11:45] asked student to turn off her insulin pump. This happened in high school. We were a pretty chill group of students. And while they were definite friend groups, we all got along well. A girl in our year had an insulin pump for type 1 diabetes. Teachers and students are like new, but this substitute teacher was definitely in the dark. She was an old, crotchety woman and far too strict compared to most subs.

[00:12:13] The pump beeps for the first time and the teacher's head jolts up. Whose phone was that? We all ignore her and go back to our business. Sometime later, the pump beeps again. Teacher's already on high alert zeroes in on the student. I heard that. Turn it off now or I'll take it. Student tries to explain it's her insulin pump. No excuses. Give me your phone now. Everyone in the class is paying attention. The few speak up.

[00:12:42] It's really her pump, miss. She has diabetes. What the fuck? Now, teacher has a choice here. Accept she is wrong, apologize and move on. But no, she doubles down. Well, turn it off then or mute it. No electronics in class. The entire class goes wild. Echoes of what the fuck echo throughout the room. The poor girl is going beat red and desperately trying to explain why she can't turn off her pump when class clown comes to the rescue.

[00:13:11] She'll literally die. What the heck is wrong with you? Teacher goes silent, looks mortified. Class ends and we never saw her again. People can be absolutely wild with T1D. I can't remember if I explained a couple of years ago I was with someone when they was diagnosed in adulthood their T1D. Just an evening hanging out together she was feeling dizzy and all this kind of stuff and it got to the point where we're so worried this was at midnight that we call like

[00:13:40] the 111 line which is almost like the non-emergency health line and they said they'd send around an ambulance because of what's going on. Ambulance comes around they check her out and they had suspicions it was diabetes. We're just like what the fuck? And at the time you know it was a busy time for the NHS etc. And they said you know you might be best getting yourself down there if you can because the queues for the ambulance were apparently they're sending you like four hours long waiting in an ambulance before you can even get in the hospital. So it might be best just to go to

[00:14:10] accident emergency. So drove her down there no lie waited eight hours to be seen they basically palmed her off and said no it's not diabetes you need to check in with your GP etc etc. It was a weekend GP wasn't open but they sent her away anyway she started feeling rough again so I had to go back there explain the situation and they kept trying to put her off. Eventually she got through to the actual diabetes apartment in the place and was diagnosed T1D but we sat in that hospital

[00:14:38] for over 20 hours and it was so difficult talking to the staff there because you know they're overworked you know there's so much going on but they just would not listen what we was told would not forward us to diabetes apartment immediately and have to keep going out into the waiting room and sent away it's just so wild and just to add an email was sent to whatever complaints process it was because no one should have to go through that but what do you guys make of that situation?

[00:15:09] Absolutely wild! Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below and let's have another story for this one we're going to walk over to the entitled people subreddit follow me guys this one's from Lord Baranoff who says lady wants my rollator apologies if I did pronounce that wrong I have looked up a couple of pronunciations on it for those that don't know a rollator is basically a walker on wheels I had a stroke six years ago and my balance and vision got messed up I can walk

[00:15:38] maybe 20 to 25 feet on a flat surface without help but I need my rollator to take long walks and take it with me whenever I go somewhere I normally have weekly groceries delivered to me at my apartment but every month or six weeks depending on schedules my mum will take me to a speciality grocery store where I can get a lot of pre-packaged meals that I just have to put in the microwave for a while we're on one of these trips and we're waiting in line checking out the rollator that insurance covers was a piece of cheap white plastic

[00:16:08] so last Christmas my mum bought me one that is black steel and titanium composition it also has a pouch on the back for storing things when I need a break I can lock the wheels and then it will fold out as a bench I can sit on so all my groceries were being checked out I folded out the bench and sat down waiting when we were done I got up and unlocked the wheels while my mum rolled out my cart of groceries I'd barely got five feet when a lady walked up and grabbed my rollator saying I'll take this

[00:16:37] I said no and jerked it away from her and proceeded to follow my mum out to the parking lot usually my mum would load groceries in the car while I leave the rollator on the side and walk my way to the passenger seat after loading the groceries my mum collapses the rollator and puts it on top of the groceries this lady followed us out to the car and was waiting there tapping her foot while we loaded the groceries I didn't trust her so I just stood holding the rollator

[00:17:06] my mum said go ahead get in this unlocked and I just shook my head no and tried to subtly point at the lady as to why I wasn't getting in mum understood and finished loading the groceries when she was done she came up to me folded down the rollator while I walked to the passenger side door mum folded down the rollator put it on top of the bags in the car and was closing the door when the lady started shrieking about how we were stealing store property I don't know if someone got him or what

[00:17:36] but her manager type came out and asked what was going on the lady screamed about how we were stealing the rollator and she needed to use it the manager asked my mum about it and she said it was mine and even showed him the plaques bolted on that had my name emergency contacts and medications and the schedule I was on in case I needed them the lady kept screaming that she needed it now that we were done the manager told her that it was mine that information on it that pertained only to me and that if she needed help

[00:18:05] they could find her a mobility scooter or something she didn't like this and suddenly went from a shrieking harpy to sweet old lady saying oh maybe she could leave it here and I could use it and leave it

[00:18:35] I don't know how it ended up for the manager but I hope he survived it at first when OP said about the manager coming out and not knowing if someone called him or something my first thought was you know retail workers can spot a Karen quite easily I imagine they got some kind of Karen sporting superpower I think it's just got to come with the territory right so maybe that's why he was immediately out there he was watching what was going on but to turn round to you at the end and says would that be okay for you to leave your property with some random

[00:19:05] assed stranger who's rude as fuck come on manager sometime later OP posted a follow up story to that one and said I posted a while ago about some lady at the grocery store trying to take the roll at her sorry for the late update but my mum was on a trip for the last week and just went back to the store yesterday to file a complaint sorry no massive justice here the manager on duty different guy from the one in the story said that the other manager no longer worked there but wouldn't say if it was his choice

[00:19:35] or not just that he no longer worked there mum told him the story and the guy and always forget how much I enjoy reading stories about entitled

[00:20:05] people and just crazy ass batshit people in general because sometimes it's absolutely wild yeah it's a story of a person being so entitled asking for another person's possession like that but the thought process this wasn't a 30 second thing this person saw him in the store thought oh I want that roll I'm still not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly and followed them outside stood behind the car tapping their foot waiting for it went as far to convince the manager to ask them

[00:20:35] for it what the fuck but what do you much love