Newbie

I'm new to both blogging and cancer. I know blogging's been around for a while now, but I never really had much curiosity about it. Cancer has been around even longer but I've generally tried to avoid that completely. But here I am now, with Stage two Hodgkins Lymphoma, blogging away like a newborn blog evangelist. Right now blogging seems like a fine pastime and I think cancer before blogging was really missing something, sort of like cell phones before texting. Finding out you have cancer is a frightening thing. You can do two things, really. Keep it on the down low, do your treatments and get on with your own private life with only your closest ones around you for support, sworn to secrecy. I come from a big Irish family and that was'nt going to happen. When I found out about my cancer I just told my sister and my brother, and within three hours I had cousins and friends calling I hadn't heard from in years. Last night my neighbor slipped a nice little card under my door, "Saw your son on the way out last night, let me know if there's anything you need." Then of course I had to tell my boss, and there's the people at work wondering where you've been. Well, jeez, you don't want to get people gossiping and speculating, might as well tell them the truth. Jesus, I have Hodkins Lymphoma. That's what I tell anyone whose asking now. And I find, in the telling, my heart feels a little less heavy. Sure, sometimes they look at me with horror and barely masked pity- often especially younger people in their 20s and 30s find diseases like this way too upsetting and cruel (although I have also had some really inspirational exchanges with this age group which I plan to write about in later blogs). So the word is now officially out, and for me, that's a good thing. It's a heart that's lighter, not having to carry it alone. What I have found in the process of telling is that there is a whole Cancer Underworld out there. The more people I've told, the more people tell me a little story back. There is a connection between people who suffer a common enemy that is empowering and so flippin' crucial. That connection is the Royal Jelly of the beehive. We will survive, hell yes! We will survive through our stories, tweets and blogs, and our answers to the question, "Hey, anybody out there, can you hear me?"