Cancer?! Ha!

I met a woman today who’s had three different kinds of cancer over the past 25 years and she’s still going strong. She’s the mother of a friend of mine, and though I’d known her for a while, we’d never talked about her brushes with cancer. I hadn’t seen her for a few years and when she asked me how I’d been, I told her I was doing great but I’d been diagnosed with cancer. She immediately took me by the arm and sat me down with a big smile and told me the story of her fights with cancer.

First it was cancer in her nose. Sixteen years later, it was a brain tumor. Then three years after that, cancer in the lymph nodes on her neck. She’s been cancer-free for five years now and her attitude is, “Cancer? Ha! I can kick its butt!” She’s 61 years old and as lively and sprightly as anyone my age.

What struck me about her was that as she was telling me about her cancer experience, she spoke like a soldier bragging about how many enemies she’d fought off. She almost spat out the word “cancer” as if it were something to scoff at. I suppose if I’d battled and won against cancer three times in a quarter of a decade, I’d be claiming bragging rights as well!