The Importance of Friends

Since her friends have heard of her diagnosis, many of them have reached out to offer their support or visited even. Some of them are coworkers, and some were already regulars in each other's lives. Others have not been as present as we each have our own lives to attend, so it's especially nice to me that they are reaching out as well. One guy I consider a good friend, and more than that, a really good person, is H. I learned a few things from him because he is a cancer survivor as J will be. I especially value his experience and wisdom, all the more now because through him, I learned that though her family and friends were trying to be there as much as they could be, J still felt alone. She had thought that she was the only one of our inner circle of friends who had ever been diagnosed with cancer. Just knowing that someone else who she considered a good friend had already gone through what she is about to go through reassured her greatly, even more I think than my words up to that point had. For that, I thank the stars that he is in her life.

The other day J had the chance to speak for a while with a friend of a friend who herself dealt with breast cancer. She was able to answer more viscerally a significant majority of questions for her. There's nothing like being able to talk to someone who's had personal experience. Our conversations at this point in time still revolve around the treatment she has undergone and the steps has yet to undergo, but the panic is not there any more. There is always an unspoken hope and a silent prayer, and the topic of our own mortality is an undertone at all times, but she is now on a mission.

Her mission is to gain weight and increase the strength of her body for the few weeks before her first cycle of chemotherapy begins. This will be the fullest the reservoir she will need to tap will be for the foreseeable future. It's ironic that she is now working to gain weight (in a healthy way), because it is quite possible that the weight loss program she went on a few months ago is the reason why she found the lump in the first place. All things work out the way they're supposed to however circuitous a path they take, and this I hope is just a switchback in her path.