Tuesday night I had a chatty two-hour dinner with a good
friend I had never met before. It was
the first time we have visited in person, but we hugged like friends who had
known one another for years. For nearly
a year, she and I have worked together on the phone and by email on projects
related to “our” cancer, triple-negative breast cancer. I was diagnosed in 2006.
She was diagnosed in 2010.
We sit outside on the San Antonio River Walk, enjoying a
balmy early December evening. The food is
delicious, the constant stream of river water and foot traffic entertaining,
and the chance to relax a blessing after a full day at the San Antonio Breast
Cancer Symposium.
The cloud over our conversation is the fact that her cancer
has returned. A big, mean, painful
cloud. When she told me of her recurrence a few months ago, I was
devastated. She is always much on my
mind as I think of her children and husband, of the contributions she has made
to the world in the past and those I hope to see in the future. I do not want to lose this new friend.
Over dinner she shows me a gorgeous picture of her with her
three little girls and I say a silent prayer that she beats this thing, that
she puts the lie to the fact that metastatic TNBC is lethal.
We talk about research we have just heard at SABCS that is refining
the definition of TNBC, determining its set of diverse genetic mutations that
may lead to targeted treatments. Soon,
please, soon.
One topic threads into another seamlessly, as is the case
with old friends.
Cancer builds seasoned friendships that grow in record time. Sharing a diagnosis means sharing part of our
life, and those who have walked this same road know the journey. So we can talk about our fears of recurrence,
grief over losing our former selves, anger about why cancer chose us, concern
for those walking after us.
We part and I walk back to my hotel and smile quietly and
sadly at the beauty of our bond.
Then, today I have lunch with another friend I had never
met. She is a reader of my blog, another woman with TNBC with
whom I have shared life experiences, research, even jokes about
chemobrain. Yes, we know it’s not
funny—oh, do we know. Her diagnosis is
barely two years old while mine was six years ago, and I want to tell her that
the mental fog passes, but I honestly can’t.
It does get better, but words don’t come to me the way they once
did.
We talk about being tired of being the Cancer Ladies, of
wanting just to be Carol and Pat. No
explanation needed, no whining, just a clear statement of fact, an unstated
understanding.
Good friends are honest with one another. Friendships, even those formed online and
from afar, are built of trust. And
sharing cancer makes us realize how much we need that trust, how much we need
one another.
Carol and I go to a Mexican restaurant on the river walk
and, again, chat for two hours. That seems to be my chattiness threshold—two
hours. Long enough to bond, not too long
to overreach.
She picks my brain on what she wants to do next, about her
hopes to give something back to the breast cancer community, to fill some voids
in her own community and maybe spread it broader. It’s exciting talk. I am honored that she
wants my perspective and I am eager to see what this smart, committed woman
creates.
We say goodbye and hug.
She has old friends who live near me in Iowa and she hopes to visit in a
few months. I am looking forward to
another long chat with my new old friend.
We’ll see where that goes. Until then, we’ll always have the
Internet.
Read more about TNBC in my book, Surviving Triple-Negative Breast Cancer.
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