In da club

tLast night i had the pleasure of sharing a drink and chat with a new wonderful friend and fellow breast cancer sister. We had the usual BC bondy banter about this procedure & that result, what we went through this week, what's next. We also deepened our friendship by finding out we had some mutual friends and shared austin history.

Then at some point she told me about a friend, another mom from a kid's sports team, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, she had just taken dinner to her. But this other woman has a different cancer, a rare weird cancer where they cannot determine where it started, and now, it is everywhere in her body, and all they can do is keep her going with various chemo treatments.

This made us sad, and then led us to a mutual and odd realization. We are lucky we have breast cancer. And furthermore, we two happen to be lucky to have types & stages that can be dealt with. We can just remove a boob, or a lump, one round of chemo perhaps and have a damn good chance of never dealing with it again. (pls note, i am not minimizing the ordeals & trauma of treatment & prognosis, it's as ugly & gnarly & sad as any)
AND
we have a club. We have pink, we have incredible resource centers & groups, we meet and bond and show each other scars like they were princess tiaras, we show off new 20 year old racks, we have walks & tee shirts, parties with pink drinks, cute phrases like "save the tatas" - it's really pretty fun. all that stuff. it helps. it strengthens. it affirms. it fills one up with a new love & gratitude for the experiences. it's weird.