One of my closest girlfriends was planning to come over for dinner on the weekend with her husband and two small children, aged six and two. At around 11pm on the Wednesday evening before, I realised that I wasn’t certain of her children’s food preferences and one of them is a particularly fussy eater. So I shot her a quick text for her to read and respond to the following morning. If I hadn’t sent the text when I thought of it there was every chance that I would have forgotten to check with her the next day.
When I stepped out of the shower in the morning there was a text message waiting for me from my friend. It read: “Can’t make dinner, in hospital, will call”. I made a note in my diary to phone her after my morning meeting, because I assumed it was too early to call before. In typical style, she beat me to it.
“Hi it’s me. We can’t make dinner on the weekend because I’ve got breast cancer and I’m in the hospital,” she said matter-of-factly.
My head started spinning, I went into a mild state of shock and blurted out a list of questions. I asked her when she found out, when was she being operated on and why she didn’t tell me sooner.
“It happened quickly, I didn’t get around to telling people but it’s alright I had the operation last night,” she said.
My diary was full that day but I raced to her bedside as soon as I could get there. My dear friend was sitting up in bed and she looked relaxed and surprisingly well. The room was filling up with large colourful blooms but I couldn’t take my eyes off her left chest, where an ample breast once was. I found it quite a confronting experience and had to fight back tears.
“I haven’t looked at it yet,” she said without any trace of the emotion I was feeling. “When they do the reconstruction and lift the other one up I will have really great breasts,” she added enthusiastically.
I laughed. She has always been one of the most practical people I have known. Life has thrown her many a curve ball – this was not her first cancer – and yet I have never once heard her wallow in self pity. She is a ‘charge the mountain’ kind of woman. She is the friend who cuts short any crap and cuts to the chase.
We talked for more than an hour about everything other than the cancer after a brief debriefing. It took her five minutes to calmly explain how she had found a lump while breast feeding, a biopsy revealed the worst and then before she knew it she was booked in to have her breast and lymph nodes removed. Then she changed the subject and regaled me with stories about work and her husband. At one point we were both laughing so hard that she received a painful reminder of the ordeal her body had been through the day before.
“I am so bored in here,” she said, less than 24 hours after a mastectomy. “I just want to get back to work.”
Her greatest concern is, understandably, the impact of her illness on her small children. In a few weeks she will begin a course of chemotherapy and she’s been told that she will definitely lose her hair. I suggested she buy a great wig now and start wearing it from the first treatment so her sons, particularly the six-year-old, need never be made aware of the cancer.
She liked the idea of that. She also liked the idea of still attending my youngest son’s performance in the school version of Rent later this week with me. I told her not to worry about coming to the show. I will video it. She should rest and prioritise her health. But I just know my friend will be there. She is determined to get back to everyday life as soon as possible and those of us who love her know never to stand in her way. Meanwhile I am still dealing with the after-shock of her news…and checking frantically for lumps.