#Losingafriend – These Are My Scars

November is Lung Cancer Awareness month and tonight is Lung Cancer Canada’s annual Screen Shot 2017-11-23 at 4.18.11 PM.png Casey Cosgrove who was the MC and truly synonymous with this night. Casey was such an integral part of this organization and made a huge difference to so many people dealing with lung cancer by not only sharing his own experience but by being a relentless advocate for the cause. On a very personal level he was a dear friend who I admired and miss very much. My heart is hurting.

Tonight won’t be the same without Casey but we will carry on best we can and try to continue the work he was so passionate about.

The above was written by my dear friend Roz Brodsky (A 3x lung cancer survivor), her words captured my feelings so well, that I asked to share them.

Screen Shot 2017-11-23 at 4.26.28 PM I wish I could say that “if you didn’t know it was Lung Cancer Awareness Month, you’re living under a rock!”, but that is not the case. Most people I have asked were surprised. Well of course they were, we don’t have white/pearl/clear ribbons everywhere. We don’t have cement trucks with our message spread across it; we don’t really have walks, or Runs for the Cure. What we have is misinformation, apathy, and inadequacies.

I can’t tell you how many smoking cessation ads I have seen. Horrible in their depiction and so stereotypical that they add to the stigma and apathy. I am all for helping people quit, I personally believe we should treat an addiction, like an addiction, not a bad habit. I also think these ads should be part of a campaign strictly for cessation and illustrating ALL the diseases it is a risk factor for.

The sad part of associating these two things is that patients like so many others, and myself have to defend ourselves or tell people we are “Non/never smokers”. We shouldn’t have to, because we both have the same thing in common, lungs. The point being, it can happen to anyone at any age.

I have been radio silent this #LCAM because I have so much to say, but am so discouraged and tired of banging my head against the wall. I don’t know what it will take? It’s not the lives lost 1.59 million globally, or as my friends in the US will tell you #433aday, which is the number of Americans that die daily from this disease. We would take notice if a jumbo jet plummeted to the ground, right? Why can’t we see that this is happening daily!

I have posted a statistics laden post the last few years; I’m not going to do that again. What I Screen Shot 2017-11-23 at 4.26.14 PM leave you with is, that Lung Cancer unbiased, it comes for everyone, regardless of age, sex, creed or colour, because we all have lungs. Anyone can get lung cancer.

Be Well

Words escape me and I can’t quite express what I’m feeling in the way I want to. Week 5 of our MBSR should be up, but I can’t bring myself to write the post yet. You see, I just found out today that a friend and fierce cancer warrior passed away last night. So if you can bare with me, that post will go up in a few days time.

Losing friends hurts.

I met Amanda about six years ago at a Young Adult Cancer Canada (YACC) conference. It was shortly after I had found out that I was terminal/incurable. I had come to conference for strength in facing what would likely be my last year. I had no idea what would transpire at conference. Previous meetings were fun and offered helpful tips dealing with some of the issues faced by young adults (YA’s) like fertility, loss of identity, isolation, relationships, disintrajectorization*, and so many more. Most importantly, they offered a chance to be with others that just got it.

Most at conference at that time were dealing with their first diagnosis, or were recently out of treatment, there weren’t too many of us that were lifers, so I was surprised to hear about an informal meeting for metastatic participants. I jumped at the chance to attend! That’s where I met Amanda. She like me was one of the 10 who attended that meeting. It was a cathartic experience. It was raw and painful, we cried, swore and shared our most intimate fears, it was beautiful.

It always amazes me how open we can be with others, baring secrets that we don’t share with our most trusted friends and loved ones. One may wonder why that is? Honestly in my experience at that time, I didn’t want my loved ones to know how scared shitless I really was. I didn’t want to admit that I might die. I wanted to shelter and protect my family and loved ones from suffering, both mine and theirs. It was sense felt by many in that room, including Amanda.

In the months following that meeting, we lost three friends. Amanda was not one of them despite being riddled with cancer. It was everywhere, her bones, liver, lungs, and other major organs. She was a walking miracle.

Again we lost friends, but she endured.

We would go on to attend more conferences together. She attended some in a wheelchair and others rocking stilettos, but her spirit was always indomitable. She loved her daughter with ferocity and her whole heart, everyone knew that because she told us with pride. Her personality was big and bold, you always knew where you stood because she didn’t mince words and didn’t hold back. She lived her life with every fiber of her soul. She unknowlingly was my against all odds beacon of hope. screen-shot-2017-02-24-at-4-43-48-pm

Today my shores are a little dimmer.

*Disintrajectorization was a word coined by Travis Gobeil in 2005 and is a term that describes what happens to your life when you get cancer as a YA. Your life is disintrajectorized off its current path and onto another totally different path.