Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Tonight Mari Jo and I went to a blood cancer support group. It was a small group of five people that met at the Cancer Services building on Maplewood Avenue. Up until today, I never knew the place existed although I have heard of the organization. It's full name, for this geographical iteration, is Cancer Services of Forsyth County. I'm sure every geographical location where there are large numbers of people with cancer and buildings has one.

A nice young lady named Ada was our facilitator for this session, which was my first. There were two other couples and one single lady in attendance. The first couple - husband named Peter, wife named Lorrie - were repeat attendees and she has multiple myeloma. The second couple - husband named Jeff and wife named Sonya - were also veterans of the support group meetings and he also has multiple myeloma. WTF? I'm already outnumbered and being ganged up against.

"Marshall Dillon! Marshall Dillon! Come quick! It's the Myeloma gang! They're spoilin' fer a fight and callin' out your Leukemia!"

But wait, there's one more; Mazie, the single lady who has non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Now that sounds as nasty as my large granular lymphocyte leukemia although my malady has far more syllables which trumps everything else. I WIN!!!

I told Mari Jo that if the meeting became a depressing, woe-is-me free-for-all, I was exiting, post-haste. (Jeez, I think I may have abused hyphens again. Hopefully, hyphens don't have good attorneys.) Well, it did NOT turn into a moan-fest and everyone had an interesting story. It's not novel material but being in a room full of real-life, cancer stricken people is better than any shitty reality show on TV. No sets, no cameras, no Emmy nominations, no credit rolls, not even your guaranteed 15 minutes of fame. Just nice, but really sick, people sitting around looking for answers and finding support among others with the same shitty outlook for the rest of their lives. If misery loves company, then these meetings are veritable orgies of commiseration. No, no, no, no, no! That's not true at all. I'm simply using my literary license to invoke interest and sympathy from my readers.

There was nothing miserable about the dialogue that took place. It was all very upbeat and, dare I say, hopeful. No one was having a pity party or expecting sympathy. Everyone listened intently to everyone else's story that revolved primarily around their particular form of cancer. We introduced our care-givers, who were our spouses in two out of three cases. In addition, we each shared a bit about our personal lives. Interestingly, there are three of us who are senior athletes. Jeff is a cyclist and Lorrie and I are runners. Lorrie has run in some of the same 5K races I've run in - Mission 5K to name one. Maybe we'll run together sometime soon if I ever get my right leg fully healed from the sciatic nerve disaster it has become.

As the meeting ended I gave each of the couples and Mazie one of our social cards with our name, address, phone number and email address on it. (I call it a social card because it's not a business card and only pass it on during social events.) Overall, it was a good meeting but one question remained unanswered for all of us. What causes the night sweats as our disease progresses? That, my readers, is the subject for another post.