My friend with breast cancer

[monster]

So, I figured I'd taken up enough of the what's making you miserable/unhappy/completely fucking mad right now thread.... but I'm not done talking about this, especially as she wants to keep it on the QT until she needs people to know and can only deal with it at little at a time, whereas I'm a head-on gung-ho type person. Like her husband. He's all "ok monday we get the final treatment plan, tuesday you start chemo". I'd be like like too, but she needs me to be "on her side". so that's where I am. (I'm great friends with her hubby too, no conflict there, but It's my job to be supportive of her decisions, unless i think they're totally insane). It's also my job to provide the comedic relief, apparently

so it's confirmed. My best friend has breast cancer. The good news it it's the most common type with many potential treatments. the bad news is that it's fast, invasive and already in the lymph nodes. So it's chemo for sure. we think that makes it stage 3, but that will be confirmed Monday.

So today we went to pick up an information packet from the hospital, and get more stuff from the library there (more about that later)

her Gynie is a good friend and pretty highly placed at the hsopital, and also a breast cancer survivor, so she's been a great source of who to see what to expect, what to ask etc So today's advice was, when you go on Monday, they'll first make you watch a video with all the other newly diagnosed women. You don't want to do this. ask for a private screening or to borrow the tape. So she did, and that's what we did when we got there.

half an hour of a blonde doctor with a terrible squint, many survivors with 80s hair and eyeglasses and boobs without nipples. and one sudden shot of a removed tumor being disected. it was green and looked like a small brain. It's definitely not something you'd want to "share' with a group of random women because our reactions would probably not be the same as everyones -possibly offensive to some, and I think it was a stress reliever to feel free to be bitchy about the presentation and hairstyles/whatever, but she would not have been able to do that in a stranger group setting.

Not terribly comforting that in such a state of the art hospital, the video they show about breast cancer treatment was made in the 80s and played on VHS. They talked about the ports for chemo like they were a rare state-of-the-art treat that you might be lucky enough to get...

anyway, then we visted the library which had a wealth of resources, many free, and we were really quite impressed both by the empathy and knowledge of the librarian. Then she reverently presented my friend with a pale pink box decorated with the pink ribbon logo and the words "Memory Maker". inside was a "Cancer Awareness bracelet" it's a silver colored "charm" bracelet with bling-sized links, with three charms designed to hold 6 photos of people, two heart charms that say 'hope' and 'strength" and a pink ribbon charm. A little sticker tells us that this is intended for sale to raise money for the cause, but come one..... initial reactions....? (1) Congratulations! you now officialy have breast cancer! here's your membership badge! (2) You're gonna die, you'll need something like this to make it all the more poignant (3) Nobody cared enough to buy all of these, so we thought, hey, why not give them to the poor bitches who get it? I'm sure whoever started this meant well, but sometimes, jeeze....

I will post a picture. why do i have it? because, much as we tried to accidentally leave it behind, we failed (didn't really want to hurt the Librarian's feelings by refusing it). so now i'm charged with the task of altering it artistically in some way that will make my friend laugh... We all know that's the best medicine, and then the bracelet will not have been manufactured for nothing

That's all for today.