The Big C

Today I went and spent some time with a friend that I hadn't seen in a while. I used to babysit her kids, and last week was the oldest, her 4 year old's birthday. So we sat on the couch and watched as the kids played in the living room. They were excitedly running back and forth from the room to their bedroom, dragging back things that they wanted to show me, pointing out everything in the new house, from the toys they'd been given over the last week to the way that the windows opened over the couch. "Manda, Manda!" they called, pulling me with small hands to the kitchen and then back again, showing me the bathroom and the porch. My friend watched them with a wistful look as we talked about the boy and how preschool was going, and her little girl's new obsession with Merida from Brave. We talked about my pregnancy and I wondered if she was thinking of having more children.

"I've got to get my stuff taken out," she finally said, timidly. Her voice wavered and I stared at her, perplexed. Stuff? From where? I couldn't remember exactly what we had been talking about, because this new information was so out of place and odd, a puzzle that needed to be pieced together.

"I have cervical cancer." she said a moment later, when the kids were rooting around in the bedroom for socks and shoes so they could go outside. Even as I sat and processed it, I think my horror showed on my face because my friend bravely moved forward, talking in the quick way she does when she's nervous, quiet enough that the kids in the other room wouldn't hear even though they're too young to understand the words.

"I thought I was pregnant because things weren't working right." she explained, "but the doctor gave me a blood test and it was negative." She then explained the adventure of the rest of the week, where she'd had her first mammogram and then an ultrasound, when her doctor suspected cancer. They found it early, she assured me. Happily she won't need chemotherapy, but she will be getting a hysterectomy. She doesn't want the surgery and recovery to mar the brightness of Christmas for herself or the kids, so she's putting off the surgery until New Years.

And I'm still processing this. I'm happy and grateful that my friend caught this early and won't need to suffer. I'm sad for her, because she is so young, only 23. Mostly, though, I am hopeful she was serious when she laughed off the future with no more children and said, "I got my girl and my boy, so I'm happy."  I think on my mother's battle with cancer that eventually she lost, and I'm happy that my friend is only losing her fertility and not her life. But then I see that look in her eyes as she watches her children and as we talk about the baby I'm having. I wonder just how at peace she is with this, despite her insistence that she's completely happy as long as removing her reproductive organs will work and cancer doesn't come back somewhere else.

I am reminded that I'm a pretty terrible friend to have, with long bouts of silence and absence, and I'm trying to make a goal to be a better friend, to see her on the weekends and give her a laugh and distraction, cookies and hugs. And hopefully, everything will work out just fine and we will go from friends to old friends who sit on the porch and watch our children grow and play together.