It’s generally thought that 32% of the people in the world have cancer. Put another way, 1 in 3 people have or will have cancer in their lifetimes.
So surely everyone knows someone with cancer, but I would have sworn before I got diagnosed that I knew no one who had it. I would think this even knowing that my mother died of cancer about 50 years ago. I was a little kid then and it was Leukemia which is not passed genetically so I really gave it no thought. I simply did not know anyone who had cancer.
Then I was diagnosed. I am not someone who goes through life quietly or privately. I keep few secrets and most people who know me know more about me than they’d like to I bet.
Once I started telling people that I had been diagnosed with cancer I found out that many people around me had also been diagnosed. People that I saw every other week or so but people who have a sense of privacy I guess because I never knew they had cancer.
Still, I had no close friends with cancer and no current family with it either. Until…boom! A couple of very close friends of mine, the people who were my primary caregivers during my cancer, had a baby. When the baby was delivered the woman was diagnosed with Fallopian tube cancer. A premature baby and a diagnosis of cancer. Aiy, yai yai!
I was more freaked out than when I was diagnosed myself. Much like me, my friend tried to refuse all help. That bothered me quite a bit – worried me, but I realized that unlike me she had a husband and a lot of money so she could hire help.
I did what I could. I dropped off meals in coolers and set them outside their front door. When my friend went through chemo, about a 12 week process if I remember correctly, I sent her something every week. Little trinkets just for fun.
I sent her a magnetic Jesus dress up kit one week. (She loved it, her now 3 year old plays with it.) I sent a lot of little things from the Kos Katalogue.
I sent her a scarf from Willie Ru Designs and cards from Mixed Media.
There used to be someone in the Katalogue who sold stones of all kinds (anyone remember who that was?) I painstakingly picked out 3 for the family and they loved them, actually had jewelry made out of them.
I also sent Fairytale Brownies one week and my friend went wild. I know that chemo can kill your taste buds and they come back in the same order we got them as babies. Sweet first then salty.
My point is that I didn’t know what to do to help her and she really wanted to be left alone. My compromise was to send her little things each week to cheer her up and let her know I was thinking about her. She says it helped.
Oh and I shouldn’t forget the first thing I did was to try to get her group of friends to
do a community quilt for her. Boy was I in for a shock. I guess I had come to take our community here at Daily Kos for granted. I would have said that she had a very close knit group of friends who would embrace the idea of a quilt readily. They had a hard time getting the concept, but Sara R persevered and one by one Jo’s friends starting sending in messages via a facebook page.
My friends reaction to the quilt was the same as all of us seem to have. She couldn’t open the box for a few days and when she did she read the messages sobbing. (Maybe Sara will have a picture of Jo’s quilt that she can post, hint, hint.)
Cancer has changed me and the way I think a lot. Having close friends who have cancer has changed me even more. THAT has brought home for me the fragility of life and on my good days I try to treat everyone I meet as if they had just been diagnosed with cancer, because damn it, there’s a 1 in 3 chance that they just did.
How about you? Who do you know with cancer? Do you treat them differently? Have you found a way to be with them or to help them out? Has it changed your life in any way?
Monday Night Cancer Club is a Daily Kos group focused on dealing with cancer, primarily for cancer survivors and caregivers, though clinicians, researchers, and others with a special interest are also welcome. Volunteer diarists post Monday evenings between 7:30-8:30 PM ET on topics related to living with cancer, which is very broadly defined to include physical, spiritual, emotional and cognitive aspects. Mindful of the controversies endemic to cancer prevention and treatment, we ask that both diarists and commenters keep an open mind regarding strategies for surviving cancer, whether based in traditional, Eastern, Western, allopathic or other medical practices. This is a club no one wants to join, in truth, and compassion will help us make it through the challenge together.