Welcome!

My last short fiction instructor told us not to write about cancer. "It's been done," she said. Well, the hell with that. I learned in the last three weeks that I have stage III breast cancer. Writing, painting, and assorted other arts are how I process stuff, in addition, of course, to long conversations with friends. These conversations have begun in earnest these recent days, but I realized my Facebook page in particular was in danger of becoming a medical-update site. I do not want that. My life is still going to be about more than cancer, as much as that may not seem possible right now. Also, I don't want to alienate friends who are not ready to walk this particular valley with me at this time. For example, one elderly friend who called to cheer me up this week can't even handle the "c-word," and there is no way she will be up for any truly frank discussion of what's about to happen here. So she is advised to keep in touch with me via Facebook. People who are comfortable with the c-word, honest discussion and occasional cursing are welcome to join me here.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Facebook, prayer and cancer

Hi again!  We are still in the chemo chair, some 4 1/2 hours later.  Taking a little longer than we'd hoped because I turned out to be allergic to one of the drugs, which inolved stopping, injecting me with lots of antidotes, starting again, repeating the whole thing.  Hours longer than we were supposed to be here, but I am breathing nicely again and getting the drug I came here for, so it's all good.  We are taking people up on their offers of child-schlepping our very first day.  Thanks, ya'll!

The support from our community has been incredible.  Our communities are spread here and there, with concentrations at Sandy Spring, at our church in Derwood, in Oregon and California and Ireland and Japan and England.  Among others.

A lot of this has been arranged via Facebook. Once again,in a recent conversation, I found  myself defending the social usefulness of  Facebook.  I know some people disagree, but for me, communication is made easier by it. This morning I had a cheery message from a friend from my high school debate team, whom I haven't seen in years.  Via Facebook.  John has been getting support from people he ran cross-country with in college in Cape Town.  And yesterday, my son wrote on Facebook that, "Cancer, chemo and radiation, my mom's bouta kick all your asses."  Within hours, there were 56 messages of support in reply from young friends.  Some were kids I've known since they were 6 years old.  Some were teammates of my kids who'd gone off to college.  Some were kids I didn't even know.  But it made me feel so psyched up and strong.  I printed out two notes they sent me and folded them up and  put them in my coat pocket.  They are my war medicine.
Posted by at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)