JORY NASH

Brittany’s breast cancers were multiple and aggressive; her oncology team wanted her to do several rounds of chemo to get on top of the tumours and one of the rounds would be Doxorubicin, aka “the red devil”, one of the more effective but difficult drugs for patients to handle. After her red devil treatments she would tell me that she felt like she was dying, that she hurt EVERYWHERE. It would be days of all-consuming pain then days more of slow recovery, then usually a few days where she felt close to ok and then right back to the clinic for another treatment, and the cycle would repeat. My job was to love unconditionally, to cheerlead, to count down the sessions, to be angry and scared for her, and to shield our young son as best I could from the worst of the pain she had to endure. I wanted to write a song that touched on all that and I chose to write it not from the supporter’s perspective, but from the patient’s, as best as I could digest from what I witnessed. I tend to write slower, dirge-like pieces when I compose on piano and that felt like the right match here. This is the only song on the album that has no harmony vocals, by design.