"I have a giraffe! On my head!" (trigger warning for serious illness)
I am in Washington State right now to spent a few weeks with my best friend, who was suddenly diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer a few weeks ago when her eye doctor spotted tumours on her retinas and sent her directly to the emergency room.
I got to see Friend on one of her last days with wispy bits of hair; she told me last night she was going to shave it off as soon as we were off the phone. Since she's having radiation on her head the follicles will die and it won't grow back. She will lose the rest of her body hair, including eyebrows, but that's from chemotherapy, not radiation, so that will come back.
Her husband, also a dear friend, had got her a hat that is shaped like a giraffe's head. She told me the other day that the giraffe is an important symbol for her, a symbol of life, because of the conversation she and I had had. The one where I had talked about the giraffe's knobbly horns and how she had decided in that conversation not to kill herself because a world that had giraffes with knobbly horns was one worth living in.
I blinked.
"Ummm," I said sub-eloquently. "When WAS this conversation?"
"In the apartment we shared."
"I don't remember it. It's not even one of those things that I didn't remember until you reminded me of it and then I started to remember. I just don't remember it."
"Well that's not really surprising given how much vodka you had drunk."
"Oh, wait!" I said. "Was this the time I was coming down with a cold and I decided to try out this cold remedy I had read about..."
"Yes, that's it!"
"...where the instructions were: 'Go to bed. Hang your hat on the bedpost. Drink whisky until you see two hats.'"
"That's it!"
"And the next day I had a worse cold and I was hung over! But it was worth it!"
So we had had a conversation that saved her life when I'd drunk something like a pint of vodka.
I hope Friend doesn't die any time soon. Memories like that (from when I was 19 and she was 21) are kind of cool. And it does sound like she has the most treatable possible kind of stage IV lung cancer, so treatable that even the oncologists are optimistic about her going into remission. This has led to a great many not-entirely-tasteful jokes about "the VERY BEST KIND of stage IV lung cancer!"
I got to see Friend on one of her last days with wispy bits of hair; she told me last night she was going to shave it off as soon as we were off the phone. Since she's having radiation on her head the follicles will die and it won't grow back. She will lose the rest of her body hair, including eyebrows, but that's from chemotherapy, not radiation, so that will come back.
Her husband, also a dear friend, had got her a hat that is shaped like a giraffe's head. She told me the other day that the giraffe is an important symbol for her, a symbol of life, because of the conversation she and I had had. The one where I had talked about the giraffe's knobbly horns and how she had decided in that conversation not to kill herself because a world that had giraffes with knobbly horns was one worth living in.
I blinked.
"Ummm," I said sub-eloquently. "When WAS this conversation?"
"In the apartment we shared."
"I don't remember it. It's not even one of those things that I didn't remember until you reminded me of it and then I started to remember. I just don't remember it."
"Well that's not really surprising given how much vodka you had drunk."
"Oh, wait!" I said. "Was this the time I was coming down with a cold and I decided to try out this cold remedy I had read about..."
"Yes, that's it!"
"...where the instructions were: 'Go to bed. Hang your hat on the bedpost. Drink whisky until you see two hats.'"
"That's it!"
"And the next day I had a worse cold and I was hung over! But it was worth it!"
So we had had a conversation that saved her life when I'd drunk something like a pint of vodka.
I hope Friend doesn't die any time soon. Memories like that (from when I was 19 and she was 21) are kind of cool. And it does sound like she has the most treatable possible kind of stage IV lung cancer, so treatable that even the oncologists are optimistic about her going into remission. This has led to a great many not-entirely-tasteful jokes about "the VERY BEST KIND of stage IV lung cancer!"