Tracie Fights Back

I see you staring from across the room with that look of profound pity. You look away quickly when I feel your gaze.

And you. I know you had no intention of shopping for hats until you saw me quickly slip off my scarf, plop one on and check myself in the mirror. I already had seen both of you across REI looking in my direction and whispering. Suddenly you were next to me.

Yes, I’m a woman and I’m bald under my scarf and breastless under my sweater. I had cancer (I refer to cancer in the past-tense even though I have lots of treatment to go).

If you only had been brave enough to say something instead of staring and whispering I could spare you suffering the emotion of pity. I might even inspire you.

While many things about cancer and its treatment suck, the looks on your faces are the worst. I know that the way I look right now make me the poster person for cancer, but your stares serve only make fleeting my moments of feeling normalcy.

I much prefer you try empathy. All you have to do is ask.

Today I had a beautiful encounter while I was out to lunch with Michelle and Carol. We had hardly been seated when a kind man approached our table and leaned into me.

“Do you have cancer?” he asked as he took my hand.

As I’ve said before “it takes one to know one.”

As it turns out, Andy is famous in Fresno and beyond, and not just because he’s one of the city’s top commercial real estate associates. He turned his brain cancer into a cause – talking publicly against the cell phones he believed caused his cancer in the days when realtors lived with them practically growing from their heads.

He sat down with us and we shared stories about treatments and clinical trials, prognosis, alternative therapies and the power of positive attitudes.

Andy’s cancer is Stage IV, which means I need all of you who are doing such an effective job praying for me to add Andy to your list. He has been in several clinical trials and has kept it at bay for three years and counting!

I believe in miracles because they happen to me every day, and meeting someone like Andy, an inspiration for perseverance, is one in a long list.

So to you who would simply stare take heart: I have taken charge of my disease and my life is far more meaningful than it was before cancer because I make every moment count. In fact, my life has never been richer.

So admire my resolve, respect my resilience or even rejoice that it’s not you. But do not pity me. That’s an emotion best reserved for people who do not know how to be grateful for what the universe throws their way.

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