Kelley - My Emotional Support Chicken

(Or Bringing ALL of me to treatment today)

While packing up my house to put it on the market, I found myself scrolling the Andover Everything Is Free Facebook page—more than usual. I’d promised myself: nothing new for at least two years. No new stuff. No new projects. No new attachments.

But then I saw her.

A woman posted an “ISO” (In Search Of) asking for used tea leaves—for a mosquito repellent experiment, naturally. But that’s not what caught me. What caught me was the photo she included: a lineup of hand-knit emotional support chickens.

I broke my promise and commented.

I didn’t have tea leaves to offer, but I wrote:
“As a Stage IV melanoma patient, I’m just wondering... how does one acquire an emotional support chicken?”

She DMed me almost immediately.
“Amanda, you need a chicken? I will make you a chicken.”

I told her I was restarting treatment this Wednesday. That I had two upcoming infusions. And that bringing a little emotional support chicken along for the ride suddenly made the whole thing feel... less clinical. Less terrifying. Almost—dare I say—serious.

She made sure to finish the chicken in time. And I knew her name before she arrived: Kelley.

Kelley—after the kind woman who made her. But also Kelley from the game my sister and I invented as kids. “Shelley and Kelley.” I was always Kelley. We were 19-year-old roommates with fake kids and imaginary boyfriends and wildly dramatic lives.

That game is more than 35 years old. And yet, as I carry Kelley the Chicken into treatment, I feel like I’m also carrying that old version of me—my childhood Kelley—brave, funny, and full of stories.

Neither of us are scared.

Kelley, my emotional support chicken in all her glory.