Getting Through The Holidays
I'm eating Thanksgiving leftovers, and Christmas snowflake garlands toss in the wind over Broadway. I'm getting jostled by crowds buying gifts nobody needs. It's the holiday season in New York. And I'm enjoying it in all its pleasures and imperfections.
Five years ago, that was not the case. A couple of months into chemotherapy for breast cancer, I was as hairless as a naked mole rat, my baldness accentuated by a well-groomed wig that bore no resemblance to my fly-away, frizzy hippie hair, which had fallen out a few weeks earlier. My fingernails and toenails were turning brown and loosening from their nail beds. My clothes were tight because I was swollen from steroids. And despite a loving family and supportive friends, I was overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and doom.
There is nothing lonelier than a life-threatening illness. Cancer isolated me from the normal world as absolutely as the windowpanes separated the freezing Little Match Girl from the fire-warmed families whose cozy homes she peered into. Like Hans Christian Andersen's shivering waif, I was shut off from the ordinary well-being taken for granted by healthy people.
It was time for me to meet my tribe. So I started attending a support group for people with illnesses like cancer and AIDS. I hardly spoke, but sitting shoulder to shoulder with people as they spoke about their struggles with all aspects of their illness made me feel less alone. The lump in my throat began to dissolve, and the knot in my stomach unsnarled. And I began to feel like a member of the human race again.
Misery loves company – in a good way. Companions who understand what you're going through ease the sadness of the cancer journey. If you're suffering from the isolation of illness, give us a call on the Hot Line. Come to one of our support-group meetings. You don't have to travel this road alone.
What advice do you have for when the distress of having cancer becomes overwhelming?
Posted December 9, 2010.
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