marcia marcia marcia

if you ever get breast cancer, and i pray you don't, i hope you are lucky enough to find yourself a marcia. (as in brady)  i think you will.  that's been one of the nicest surprises so far, how many 'sisters' there actually are out there, willing to mentor you through your rookie terrain.  my marcia has been a real god send.

of course this makes me jan, which i'm fine with now, though i hope one day i can be a marcia to someone else, who might need or want my 'expertise.'  this is assuming i'll have some, when it's all said and done. you can't help but pick things up along the way.  not that there's any kind of end of semester quiz, but i honestly believe i could pass a basic test even at this very early juncture based on what i've learned so far, largely in part to marcia, and my surrogate marcia also.  see what i mean?  there are even folks willing to be marcia stand ins!  how lucky am i?  but that's the nature of this kind of diagnosis.  there are far too many marcia's and jan's out there in the world.  sure, we're grateful for each other, but wouldn't it be better not to have them, or need them at all? i mean in the context of breast cancer mentoring? 

i like to believe that by the time my four daughters come of age, this kind of disease will be a thing of the past, like polio, or scarlet fever. i like to imagine them having a chat in the future, asking each other, can you believe they used to do mastectomy for breast cancer?  can you believe women had to have radioactive beams aimed at their breasts, essentially burning them daily, as insurance against rogue cancer cells? seriously!  how about the women who lost their hair, due to the chemo being so 'effective', that it was considered a small cross to bear, in exchange for mercy? how barbaric, is what i want them to say.  but this is all we have for now.  though great things are happening, right this minute, just around the cancer bend. 

 in the meantime, i love my marcia. and i'm super proud to be her jan. it took me a minute to figure out how to be katy with cancer. but thanks largely to marcia, i'm getting it figured out.

                              xx katy (jan)