I took a year off between college and graduate school to work as a phlebotomist at a hospital near my parent’s home in Illinois.  My job involved going to every department in the hospital to collect blood from patients.  I spent time in the ICU, the cardiac floor, the maternity ward, and the psychiatric unit.  I even scrubbed into the operating room once to do a finger stick on a patient undergoing brain surgery.

The most memorable experience of that year was the night I got called to Pediatrics to draw blood from a 5 year-old girl who was being admitted with newly-diagnosed diabetes.  The nurses called me so I could draw blood off of her I.V. instead of having to stick her with a needle a second time.

I walked into the room to introduce myself to the patient and her parents, and I immediately recognized the patient’s mom, who was sitting in bed with her little girl.  She was a physician on the hospital staff that I had often seen rounding on her patients while I was doing blood draws on the floors.

When the nurses were ready, we walked the little girl and her mom down the hall to the Procedure Room.  Because the medical staff didn’t want children to associate their hospital room with pain, all procedures were done in a separate room.

As the doctor stood against the wall watching, we strapped her daughter onto a papoose board, and started her I.V.  When the needle went into her arm, the little girl shrieked.  As I collected her blood into vials to take to the lab, she kept screaming.  After a few minutes of crying without seeing any results, she lifted her head off the table and screamed, “MOMMY!  I’M IN PAIN!” 

I watched the doctor’s face, and noted the tears that welled up in her eyes as she watched her daughter continue to struggle against the restraints.  But, to her credit, she kept her distance and let us finish the procedure. 

The moment we were done, the doctor undid the restraints, scooped her daughter up in her arms, and carried her back to her room.

I’ve thought about this scene a lot over the past few years.  Pain is one of the age-old arguments against the existence of a loving God. If there really is a God, and if He is as loving as the Bible claims, why do humans suffer? 

C.S. Lewis tackled the issue with his book, “The Problem of Pain.”  Later, after he lost his wife to cancer, he wrote a candid account of his disappointment with God in, “A Grief Observed.” Decades later, another Christian author named Philip Yancey tried to answer the question in his book, “Where is God When It Hurts?”

This abstract, theoretical question became very concrete and personal two years ago when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 27.  Despite undergoing the most aggressive surgical treatment available, a bilateral mastectomy, the cancer recurred a year later.  I spent the next seven months undergoing four surgeries, eight rounds of chemotherapy and 30 sessions of radiation.

I was out of work for most of that year, and depleted the majority of my savings.  I lost friends I thought I could depend on, and when I needed them most, my church family kept a safe distance.

 I couldn’t understand why, when I was hurting so much, God seemed so far away.  And I couldn’t understand why, in spite of all the prayers of those who loved me, the cancer recurred and I had to suffer even more.  Where was God?  Why didn’t He intervene?  Why did He let the pain continue long after I said ‘Enough’? 

I struggled with these questions for a long time without arriving at any satisfactory answers until I thought back to that Procedure Room on the pediatrics ward. 

I thought about the paradox of that doctor.  The mother in her loved her daughter more than anything, and wanted her child to be healthy and pain-free more than anyone else on the medical team.   But the doctor in her knew that the very best thing for her child was an I.V. that could provide life-saving insulin and fluids, and blood work that could accurately diagnose the problem. 

And so, even though it caused her child pain, because the doctor knew it was ultimately in her child’s best interest, she allowed us to inflict pain that the little girl could not understand.  But at the soonest possible moment, she was there to pick her daughter up and carry her away from the pain.

And then I thought about the paradox of God.  How is it possible that He could seem so far away to me – and to other saints, like Job and David – and yet promise, “I will never leave you or forsake you”? (Joshua 1:5)  How could life hurt so much when He promised to give us, “a future and a hope”? (Jer. 29:11)

In the light of the woman who was simultaneously a mother and a physician, I began to see God as both my Father and the Great Physician, the One who is infinitely loving, and infinitely wise.

Sometimes, like the mornings when I can’t get out of bed because I am exhausted from my cancer treatments, or the evenings I watch the news and see victims of natural disasters who are dying of starvation and diseases, I wonder where God is.

And then I think, He’s the loving, all-knowing Father standing against the Procedure Room wall of life, watching His children suffer as tears well up in His eyes, waiting for the moment when our trial has finished its work in our life, and He can pick us up and carry us home.

Where is God when it hurts?

He’s right here.  And He’s been here all along.

My friend Lauren died of lung cancer the night before I started chemo.  She died a year ago today.

Lauren was the adjunct professor of my first journalism class at Columbia.  When my professor found out I was facing breast cancer, he asked Lauren to meet with me.  She had been diagnosed with stage III lung cancer the year before and had finished surgery, chemo, and radiation.

“Cancer is one big mindf%*#,” I remember her telling me.  “It makes you wonder, ‘Who did I piss off in heaven?’”  Then she told me she had a few friends who were breast cancer survivors and were doing well.  “You’ll get through this,” she promised.

Lauren was tough.  She was a tenacious newspaper reporter.  She told me she didn’t tell her colleagues about her diagnosis because she didn’t want them to feel sorry for her; she wanted them to think she was a bitch.  (her words, not mine)

When her cancer went into remission, she married her fiance and bought a cool apartment in Manhattan. 

 Lauren was like the big sister I never had.  When someone made an insensitive comment to me, like, “I want to have breast cancer so I can get a free boob job!”, I’d call Lauren.  When I was in pain after my mastectomy, when I had a falling out with my oncologist, when I just wanted to talk to someone who I knew would understand, I would call Lauren.

We exchanged cancer articles and iPod playlists and writing ideas. 

And then, just weeks after her honeymoon, her cancer came back. 

She had more surgery, chemo, and radiation.  The sicker she got, the more we talked.  I was taking classes at Columbia again.  Every week when I went into the city, I took the subway to the stop near her apartment, got pizza from the neighborhood pizzeria, and spent the afternoon with her at her apartment.  Her nutritionist had told her to eat more vegetables, which she hated, so her concession was to eat veggie pizza. 

She was writing a column called ‘Life With Cancer’ for her newspaper, so when I went over I’d proofread her column and we’d brainstorm about what topics she should write about next. 

The last time I saw Lauren was one of those afternoons when I took the train into the city, and took the subway to her neighborhood.  We got pizza, then walked to a spa a few blocks away.  She got accupuncture because her chemo was making her nauseated, and I got a massage.  Then we met Barry, a mutual friend who is a New York Times reporter and Columbia professor, at a Starbucks nearby. 

Barry and I left to meet a group of Columbia students for dinner, and Lauren went home. 

A few weeks later, I had reconstructive surgery, and found out that my cancer was back.  As I was getting scans and bone biopsies and a port placement, Lauren’s cancer was growing out of control.  In the two weeks between my diagnosis and starting chemo, I talked to her on the phone a few times.  She had mets to her liver, which caused fluid to accumulate in her abdomen, which put pressure on her lungs.  She sounded more and more out of breath.  And she was in pain. 

Talking was an effort for her, so we started e-mailing instead.  In the last e-mail she wrote to me, she said, “Cancer is f—ing cruel and sick.”  She asked me if I had any Kavorkian ideas.  She just wanted to die, she said.

She died two weeks later at Memorial Sloan Kettering, a cancer hospital in New York City.  She died the night before I started chemo.  It was like she was passing the cancer torch to me to carry on.

I couldn’t go to New York for her funeral because I was sick — the first round of chemo made me vomit incessantly.

I miss Lauren.  When I was going through treatment, there were many times I picked up my phone to call her to ask a question or get advice or get reassurance that everything was going to be okay, and then realized she was gone. 

A year later, I still have her phone number in my cell phone.  I still have her e-mail in my address book.  I still have her memory in my heart.

In the spring of my senior year of college, I made an S.O.S. call to my dad.  I was doing my taxes on my own for the first time, and it wasn’t going well. 

“Let me get this straight,” he said.  “You’re getting an A in Calculus, but you can’t fill out a 1040 EZ form?”

I sheepishly admitted to the irony.  It’s a paradox I still can’t explain — why complicated things like writing a master’s thesis, studying at two Ivy League Universities, and acing Organic Chemistry come easy to me while simple tasks like completing a 1040 EZ form, changing my windshield wipers, or registering my car at the DMV completely elude me.

This may help explain why I was dreading my recent trip to the Oregon DMV, where I had to register my car and trade my Connecticut driver’s license for an Oregnian ID.

I had everything with me: my license, registration, proof of insurance, title, address verification…every piece of paperwork I thought they could possibly need.  I produced these proudly to the woman behind the counter, who instead of being impressed by my organization asked tersely, “Where’s your emissions certificate?”

DOH!

She gave me the address of an emissions testing site, I packed up all my documents, and left.  An hour later, I returned with the certificate. 

Before finishing my registration, the woman said I needed to take my driver’s exam.  Had I studied, she asked.

Yes, I answered.

She showed me to Computer #1. I sat down, took the exam…and failed it.

“I thought you studied,” the woman said.

“I did,” I answered.  “I read the entire online study guide.”

“Oh,” she said, handing me a driver’s manual.  “The online edition isn’t the complete version.”

“Obviously not,” I whispered to myself. 

She told me I could come back the next day to retake the exam.

I left the DMV completely frustrated, ready to pull out the little post-chemo hair I have. 

The bright spot of my day was that I had a date that night.  “There’s this cool place that has a great happy hour,” my date told me when he called me to make plans.

“Perfect,” I said.  “I could use a fun night out.”

When we got to the restaurant, the bartender asked to see our ID’s before we could enter the bar where the happy hour specials were being served. 

He looked at my Connecticut ID - the one taken 3 years ago when my hair was long and blonde- then looked up at me, then back at my ID before finally handing it back to me.

“What made you chop your hair?” he asked glibly.

“I had chemo and it fell out, and it’s just starting to grow back,” I answered him with an even stare.  I have found that this answer usually shocks people into a respectful silence, or at most a meaningful, “I’m so sorry.”

But not our guy.  Nope. Without pausing, he asked loudly, “Did you lose ALL your hair?”

I nodded silently.

“What flavor did you have?” he asked next.

“What do you mean — what flavor of chemo or what flavor of cancer?” I asked incredulously, shocked that this conversation was still going.

“Cancer,” he said nonchalantly.

“I had breast cancer,” I answered, barely above a whisper, willing him to be shocked into shutting up.

“Cool,” he answered.

“No, not really – it’s not like picking an ice cream flavor.”

“This guy who works here had thyroid cancer and he had chemo and all his hair fell out – even his eyebrows. It was crazy.”

And with that, he switched topics.  My date ordered for us, and the bartender left to put in the order.

I stared at the TV monitor on the opposite wall pretending to watch the NCAA game, mustering all the strength in me to blink back the tears.  I am always ashamed to cry in public.  To me, it carries the same stigma of peeing your pants – everyone stares at you and simultaneously feels sympathetic for and titillated by your misfortune.

I was managing to hold it in until my date put his arm around me and said softly, “You’re really quiet.  Are you okay?”

I shook my head, and with that, the dam broke.  Tears of anger and frustration and profound sadness began streaming down my cheeks.

I tried to find the words to tell my date how angry I was that this idiot had dared to compare having cancer to choosing an ice cream flavor, that he had dared to point out how inferior my cropped head was to the long blond tresses I used to have, that he hadn’t shut up and respected my privacy, that I hadn’t forced the end of the conversation sooner, and maybe most of all, that he had reminded me.  I was trying to be a normal girl in a cute skirt with a matching hand bag out to dinner with a date, and with a few questions from an intrusive stranger, the illusion that I was just a normal girl was shattered, and I was thrown back into the terrifying hell of cancer and chemo.

But of course, I couldn’t articulate any of these thoughts.  I could only blubber and use my cloth napkin to wipe away the tears falling so furiously they were dripping from my chin.

In an attempt to retain the little dignity I had left, I stood up, layed my napkin on my chair, whispered “I’ll be back,”and made a beeline to the ladies’ room.

In the privacy of the stall, I buried my face in my hands and cried. And cried. And cried some more.  Every time I thought the flood was abating, a new wave welled up and streamed down my face in torrents.  All I could think was, ‘If only.’  If only we hadn’t come here, if only we hadn’t sat in the bar, if only the bartender had kept his mouth shut, if only I’d passed the driver’s test and gotten my new ID, he never would have seen that old photo of me…that’s right.  In a hail-mary attempt to fault someone for this disastrous day, I blamed it all on the DMV.

I don’t know how long it took me to compose myself. 10, 15, 20 minutes?  I wasn’t keeping track.   I splashed my face with water, then blotted it dry, and prayed I could be strong enough to hold back the tears I could still feel deep down inside of me.

I walked out of the bathroom to find my date standing in the lobby holding my purse. 

“What did you do with the food?” I asked, feeling guilty he’d forfeited his dinner for me.

“I took care of it,” he said elusively, but I didn’t press him for details.  He held my hand as we walked to the car.  He opened my door for me, and closed it once I had my seatbelt fastened.

As he started the car, I began crying again.  No drama, just sitting in the passenger seat quietly with tears streaming down my face.  As he drove and I cried, the rearview mirror caught my attention.  I watched the road and the trees that lined it, the ones that used to loom so large in our view, growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared into a vague background. 

And somehow, it gave me hope.

I’m usually pretty open about my diagnosis and everything I’ve been through and how I feel about it.  But 2 months ago, I moved to Portland, OR, from Connecticut and decided I was going to start over.  I began working in the emergency room at a local hospital, and I wore my wig every day, and I never told anyone what I’d been through except for my supervising physician…and I swore him to secrecy.

 When I started the job, I didn’t know when I was going to stop wearing the wig.  What I really wanted to do was to wear the wig until my real hair was as long as my wig hair, and I could just take the wig off and everyone would just think I’d changed my hair color.

 But this morning, I put the wig on and my real hair, which is blonde, was sticking out from under the brunette wig.  I tucked in my real hair as best I could and went to work, but I worried all day at work that someone was going to notice and was going to think I was a freak for wearing a wig.  And so today, I decided I was ready to come out of the closet and reveal my true self to my colleagues. 

I came home from work and wrote a letter to my supervising physicians to explain my situation to them.  It took me a long time to compose the letter, but this is what I came up with…

I’m writing this e-mail to tell you something that’s probably going to be surprising, and I wanted to make sure you heard it from me instead of from the rumor mill.

Before I moved to Portland, I underwent treatment for breast cancer.  I had 4 surgeries, 30 radiation treatments, and 8 rounds of dose-dense chemo. The chemo suppressed my bone marrow, which is how I got gram positive and MAI pneumonia in November, and ended up in the ICU in sepsis.  As you know, this delayed my start date.

I only told Dr. — about my situation, since he was my supervising physician and I thought I owed him an honest explanation for why I was moving to Oregon later than expected.

I wanted the chance to get to know you, and give you the chance to get to know me, without any stigmas attached.  The reason it becomes important to tell you about this now is because for the past 2 months I’ve been wearing a wig while I waited for my hair to grow back.  And my hair has now grown back to the point where I’m comfortable without the wig.

So…in the next few days I’ll be showing up to work not as a brunette, but as a cropped blonde.  It’s a pretty dramatic change, and I’m sure it will raise questions.  Since I’m not a big fan of lying, I’m fine with telling my colleagues and co-workers that I’ve been through chemo, but I’m not planning to share any more particular details than that.

Sorry to spring this on you, but like I said, I wanted you to hear this from me.  If you have any questions or suggestions, I’m open.

Thanks.

Sarah Thebarge

I feel really nervous about the whole thing…I am afraid that my coworkers will think I was a freak for wearing a wig, that they will feel betrayed that I didn’t trust them with the intimate details of my life, or that my colleagues who know me as a confident, capable clinician will now view me as a vulnerable, sick girl. But I’m doing it anyway.  On Saturday, my next shift, I’m going to show up to work not as a brunette but as a cropped blonde. 

Wish me luck.

A few days after every Herceptin infusion, I get muscle aches that make me feel like I’ve been weight lifting with Hulk Hogan.  During those few days, it’s hard to get out of bed and once I finally do, I limp around for a few minutes until my muscles finally concede and agree to start working like they’re supposed to.

The other day I was post-Herceptin, and I had to get groceries.  I drove to Albertson’s and  looked for the spot closest to the store entrance.  There were handicapped spaces, in which I cannot legally park, but right next to those spots was another space with a sign that said, Reserved for Expectant Mothers.

I sat in my car for a minute, pondering my dilemma.  OK, so it was technically reserved for pregnant women.  I didn’t begrudge any expectant mother her parking space, but surely I was having just as hard a day as any pregnant woman.  I may not have been pregnant, but my muscle aches and fatigue provided just as much a challenge to me as any bulging belly could present to another woman.

And then I wondered why the proprietors of the grocery store singled out pregnant women. Weren’t there lots of other people who, like me, were having a bad day and needed a little TLC, like a special parking space?

And so, in a subtle act of civil disobedience, I parked in the special spot. 

If it were up to me, every mall and grocery store and shopping center would have a Bad Day parking space.  Because, let’s face it, we all have bad days.  And on those days, it would be nice to know that the rest of the world cares and has made a special accommodation just for you.

You just lost your job?  You had chemo this week?  Your teenager got her navel pierced without telling you?  You didn’t get into grad school?  You spilled coffee on your white shirt on the way to work?  Your adjustable rate mortgage just doubled?

We care, we love you, we understand.  We’ve been saving this spot just for you — park here.

We can’t fix each other’s lives, but we can certainly make others’ lives easier with a little creativity and a lot of kindness and some simple sacrifices…even something as simple as a parking space.

My favorite essay of all time is one that an English professor named Nancy Mairs wrote about her experience with Multiple Sclerosis.  In her essay, entitled On Being A Cripple, she wrote, “Life is a lesson in losses.  I learn one at a time.” 

After my mastectomy in 2006, I began writing a memoir about my experience with breast cancer.  Borrowing Mairs’ phrase, I tentatively titled it, “A Lesson in Losses.”   When I told one of my friends what I was calling my memoir, she said matter of factly, “Well, that’s just depressing.” 

She was right — it was depressing.  Four months after my mastectomy, I wrote this prologue to my memoir:

 At that point, that’s all my experience was: a series of excruciating losses.  After my recurrence in 2007, the list of losses grew even longer.  At night when I had trouble sleeping, I’d lie in bed and take a mental inventory of everything I’d forfeited to cancer: my breasts, my hair, my boyfriend, my fertility, a lot of friends, and, after being out of work for seven months, most of my savings.  A few days after I finished chemo, I went into sepsis from pneumonia and almost lost my life — and in the midst of all the sadness, I almost lost my faith.

God felt so far away, it was as if He weren’t there at all. I read verses like Joshua 1:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and I told God, “I know You’re there, but I can’t feel You.” 

I read Jeremiah 29: 13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,” and I told God, “I know You’re there, but I can’t find you.”

It was a dark, dark time, and it seemed to me that the only solution was for God to take me home.  At least in heaven, there would no pain, no scars, no sadness to eclipse the light of His presence.  “I just want to be with You,” I told God over and over again.  “I’ve lost everything I cared about.  Just take me home to be with You.”

And there, in the darkest valley, is where a merciful God reached down and found me.  In the midst of sleepless nights and muscle aches and bone pain and nausea and fevers and everything else I was going through, He finally let me feel His presence again.  He didn’t magically remove all the effects of living with cancer in a fallen world; He made Himself known in spite of it.

Like David said in Psalm 18, “He reached down from on high and took hold of me…He rescued me because He delighted in me.”

After that experience, I decided to rename my memoir, because A Lesson in Losses doesn’t seem adequate any more.  The amazing aspect of my story is not in all the losses I sustained, although they were significant. 

The really remarkable thing is that in the midst of those losses, I was found. 

Whenever someone learns I’ve had breast cancer, the response is always the same.  They cock their head and study me for a moment, then finally overcome their inhibition and ask, “How old are you?”

I tell them I was diagnosed at 27.

“But you’re so young,” they say.

I nod.

“Do you have a strong family history for breast cancer?” they ask.

I shake my head.

“Then why…?”  they wonder out loud.

I used to get frustrated with this line of questioning, because I don’t have a good explanation for why I got cancer when I did.  Now, instead of trying to identify a cause, I shrug and tell people that Fate flipped a coin and it landed on the wrong side.

For the past 7 months, I’ve seen the ugly side of that coin: chemo, hair loss, surgery, radiation, pneumonia, Tamoxifen… the list is exhausting.  I’ve gotten so used to ticking these negatives off to God as I tell Him I’ve had enough and I can’t deal with anything else going wrong right now.

Finally this week, for the first time, it occurred to me to look at the other side of that coin.  Yes, I had to do chemo, but at least chemo is available and there are medications to ameliorate the side effects.  And yes, I’ve had four surgeries, but at least at the end the surgeon was able to say, “We got it all.”  And yes, it’s unfair that I have to take a drug like Tamoxifen, but at least there’s a medication available that reduces my risk of a recurrence by 50%. 

Trying to be thankful takes a lot more energy than I thought it would.  It means that I have to start getting over myself and looking beyond my unfortunate circumstances.  But I think it’s an important step in getting my life back. 

Because if I wallow in my misfortune forever, if I forfeit my future to ruminate on my past, then cancer wins. 

And I’ve fought too hard and too long to concede now.

 After writing the previous post, I remembered a verse I read a long time ago in the book of Lamentations that began, “Because of the Lord’s great love for us, we are not consumed…”

Today I looked it up on Biblegateway.com in a reader-friendly version of the Bible called The Message.  I was amazed to see how relevant it was to my experience and all the questions I’ve had — and how much hope it offers to people who are having a hard time.

Here it is, from the 3rd chapter of Lamentations:

19-21I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness,
   the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed.
I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
   the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember,
   and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:

 22-24God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
   his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
   How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
   He’s all I’ve got left.

 25-27God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
   to the woman who diligently seeks.
It’s a good thing to quietly hope,
   quietly hope for help from God.
It’s a good thing when you’re young
   to stick it out through the hard times.

 28-30When life is heavy and hard to take,
   go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions:
   Wait for hope to appear.
Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face.
   The “worst” is never the worst.

 31-33Why? Because the Master won’t ever
   walk out and fail to return.
If he works severely, he also works tenderly.
   His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.
He takes no pleasure in making life hard…

When I found out I was going to be admitted to the hospital for the second time in November, I called one of my best friends.  “Sarah, my heart is just breaking for you,” she said.

That night as I lay in my hospital room alone, staring at the ceiling, I asked God, “Is your heart breaking, too?”

Since I was diagnosed almost two years ago, I’ve had dueling images of God in my head, and I can’t reconcile the two.  There’s the God who Timothy talks about as a commanding officer when he writes, “Endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ,” and there’s the God who in Matthew 7 is described as a Father who longs to give good gifts to his children.

When I’m having a hard time and God seems to be silent, I always wonder if He’s the commanding officer who’s pushing me until I either break or become stronger, or if He’s the loving Father who’s aware of every tear I cry, whose heart is breaking for me.

The question bothered me to the point that when a Catholic chaplain came by the next day, I asked her what she thought was going through God’s mind when His children suffered.  Before I finished the question, tears were streaming down my face.

She pulled up a chair next to my bed and explained her view of suffering. “I think we suffer because we live in a fallen world.  God lets suffering and pain happen, and He chooses not to intervene.”

I found her answer depressing.  “If that’s true, where’s the hope?” I asked.

She thought for a minute, and then answered, “I guess the only hope we have is to be incarnational.”  That was her word — incarnational.  To me it sounded more like a thesis topic than a ray of hope for a cancer patient.  “We need to be to each other the hope and love we can’t find in the world,” she said.

She left quickly and promised to return, but she never came back.

A few days later, a social worker from the hospital came to my room to see how I was doing.  “You must sometimes ask yourself why this happened to you,” she said.

I nodded.

“What do you think?” she asked.

I shrugged.  “Even if I knew why, it wouldn’t change anything,” I said.

She launched into her own theory.  “I think God is like a giant and we’re like ants,” she said.  “I think He tramples some of us, but not because He’s mean, just because we are unfortunate enough to be in His way.  I think suffering is a random accident,” she said.  She patted my hand and walked away.

It was by far the least helpful thing anyone’s said to me since I got sick. 

I don’t have an answer yet, but I can’t accept the answers those women tried to offer me.  There is no comfort in randomness.  And there is no security in depending on other human beings to provide us with the hope and love we need.  I think there has to be a better solution to this problem of pain. 

At the end of every Relay for Life, the annual walk-a-thon sponsored by The American Cancer Society, all of the siblings, parents, children, spouses, and friends of cancer survivors clear the track.  The only people left standing are those who have been through cancer themselves. 

When everyone else has retreated to the stands, they take what is called The Survivor’s Lap, to the accompaniment of a standing ovation from the crowd. 

I’ve talked to many breast cancer patients who have participated in the Relay and I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t sobbed during their Survivor’s Lap.   Because they remember friends who aren’t there to walk with them this year.  Because they’ve been through a hell most people will never know.  Because while most people do nothing special to be alive, these survivors have endured a storm of procedures and surgeries and chemo and radiation to keep their place on the planet. 

Today, my last day in New Haven, I took my survivor’s lap.  No one was watching or clapping or holding my hand as I walked through the drizzle, but I did it anyway.

I walked past the Starbucks where I got a Valencia mocha after I interviewed at Yale Med School 6 years ago. 

I walked past the bookstore with the pay phone where I called my parents to tell them I’d been accepted.

I walked past the courtyard where I chatted with a former Surgeon General before she gave the commencement address to our graduating PA class.

I walked on the path I took to the surgeon’s office the day I got my biopsy results. 

I walked past the restaurant where I met my then-boyfriend after I got my hair cut in anticipation of chemo.  I remembered how he held me at arms’ length while he studied me, and then said, “You look like a little boy.  This is going to take some getting used to.” 

I walked past the cafe where I sat in silence with him after he called it quits because it was ‘too hard.’

I walked past the pharmacy where I got all of my prescriptions filled while I was on chemo.

I walked past the hospital where I spent 3 weeks in November and December, trying not to die from pneumonia. 

And I cried.   Because it was hell.  Because I survived.  Because I almost didn’t survive.  Because I lost my optimism.  Because I almost lost my faith.  Because I will never be the same. 

Because I will miss it all.  And because I won’t miss it at all.