The Cancer Underworld

I was looking forward to seeing Maria. It had been over two years. Traveling in different circles, we'd lost touch. Then I heard she'd been diagnosed with gastric cancer and was undergoing treatment. I'd spoken to her on the phone once to wish her encouragement. She sounded like the same spunky little Italian spitfire she'd always been, telling me how she was getting through it all in an accent particular to Rhode Islanders. About two weeks after we spoke I found a lump in my neck that I knew right away was all wrong. In another week after that I was calling Maria back to share the irony that I too had cancer. "We need to get together soon," she said. She invited Steve, our mutual, long time friend, and I, for a small barbeque the following weekend. Maria and Lou live in a really beautiful place in Barrington, right on the bay. Steve and I were the last of several couples to arrive, and we quickly split up, me staying in the kitchen with the girls, and Steve wandering out to the back deck where the men warmed themselves in the glow of the barbecue. Maria looked thin but pretty as always, and wore a girlish pink Indian style top. She hugged me and then wasted no time introducing me to the three women in the room. "And this is Cheryl" she said, nodding to the medium set blond sitting on a bar stool next to me. "She's a survivor." A survivor. This was a term I was going to become intimately familiar with. I would think about it's meaning in whole new ways from the moment I sat down to take my first chemotherapy treatment. But more on that later. Right now I was being introduced to a "survivor" and as a newly diagnosed cancer patient (argh! I am beginning to identify as a CANCER PATIENT! More on that later too...)I wanted to meet her and all the other survivors too. The more survivors I met the less terrified I'd be. I did not feel intrusive when I shook Cheryl's hand and asked without blinking, "What kind?" "Breast," she said. "Nine years out." I felt an immediate connection to this woman, as if we were both members of some secret club. I don't know if she felt the same, because we didn't talk much after that. Maria had had a gastrectomy as part of her treatment, and the women were trying to get diet tips off her. They were laughing about it the way old friends find small bits of humor in each others wreckage.