The Kindness of Strangers

My lovely friend Sheila has a friend who is an MD at the National Cancer Institute.  I do not know this man, have never met him. But he has taken the time to read my test results (I scanned and emailed them to him) and discuss my prognosis.  According to Nico the kindest doctor in the world, I am most likely stage II and because the lymph nodes do not show as enlarged on the MRI, my prognosis is very good.

The most I am likely to lose are my breasts.  But due to the wonders of modern breast reconstruction, my breasts will be rebuilt. They will be bionic, they will be better . . . stronger . . . faster. Well, not faster. But they will look perky even when I am 90.  As I told Gillian, a survivor in California who is about to start breast reconstruction, she will be the most popular girl in the nursing home and so will I.

The worst part of getting cancer is this waiting and this silence from the doctors. Silence that I can fill with fears of my inevitable death, where I can imagine that the pain on my right side is the cancer spread to my kidneys, where I don't know what I am fighting and how bad it is going to hurt me.

But thanks to the incredible kindness of a stranger, I am calmer now.  As Jennifer put it, another survivor who is going through her second round of breast cancer (first time was 15 years ago, and now it's back),  "The first time I got breast cancer, I was afraid I was going to die. The second time, I was just annoyed."

I'm hoping to being merely annoyed soon rather than terrified. And I'm hoping to never go through this again.

And Nico, the stranger who offered a wonderful and unexpected kindness to a frightened woman, he will be fed tasty foods and treats by me for the rest of his life. As soon as I meet him.