The Cancer Connection

My first visit to the oncology department wasn't that all that long ago in terms of time but if based on experience it was a lifetime ago.

As I sat in the waiting room waiting to be called in by my oncologist I had no idea just how much my life was about to change. It began with my reaction to my first view of the treatment rooms and the patients lined up in the recliners receiving their chemo treatments (see post).

The experience of my first chemo treatment will never leave my memory, nor will it fade. I looked very much like the obvious new girl with my full head of thick hair. Chemotherapy isn't all that was given or received in these treatment rooms. Equally as potent was the advice and comfort dispensed from so many of the chemo veterans. Then before I knew it, without even realizing it, I too had become one of those veterans, baldly, proudly, strongly and lovingly passing along hope to those who started the process after me and those that needed it.

Although I had never experienced radiation treatments before, I knew that they would in no way compare to chemotherapy and I did not in any way feel frightened as I began the process. I am experienced in cancer, in surviving, in doing what you have to just to get through, whether it be a single treatment or a lifetime.

There is a bond that is shared among cancer patients/survivors. I have heard it referred to as "a club that no one wants membership in" but I think that phrase diminishes the true value of that bond. I have experienced it as a kinship in which you are naturally connected to someone at the deepest levels of their being; their hope, their fears, their mortality.

I have met co-survivors being treated for a multitude of cancers ranging from cervical, tongue, leukemia and of course fellow breast cancer patients. But we all share two things in common - cancer and survival.

I can't adequately capture in words the connection you feel when talking to a fellow patient/survivor and although I truly wish there weren't so many of us I am so grateful to each and every one that I have had the honor of crossing paths with.