This support group thing was never for me. Not once in three years did I sit around a table or on a sofa with women in wigs and terror in their eyes. It was enough to keep my own life together, and sharing the thing that kept trying to rip it apart seemed counter-productive. Nor did I have much to offer, given my insufficiently positive attitude and all.

 Tonight, though, the meeting is informational. Experts –radiologists – will tell us when it makes sense to get scanned.  Every time that back pain returns? Or just when you can’t stand it anymore? Useful information.

Not only that, the meeting is in a back room at Nordstrom. Nordstrom, that temple of shoes – boots with cuffs and yellow wedges for spring and spiky, spiky heels in a million colors I can’t wear.  To get to the meeting you must pass impossibly fashionable racks of skirts and sweaters and jeans that reduce you one size.

Dowdier and dowdier I feel, the dowdy of I don’t care, I don’t have to care anymore about that blouse, God what a gorgeous blouse, God how dowdy I feel.

In the barren meeting room, though, with 14 unchosen sisters, there is no sign of Today’s Looks, looks that say look at me, I walk with confidence, I adorn the world. Our shoes are sensible and outfits say, hey, I got here, what else do you want? 

The one who is still bald wears a purple bandana tied around her scalp, a clashing red plaid hat perched on top. That’s one go-to-hell look, I think. I smile at her and she seems pleased.

We introduce ourselves and the pals we’ve dragged along with us: stage I, grade 3; mastectomy two years ago; metastasis in the liver; 24 years out! Four of the fourteen are members of a Monday night group called The Other Shoe. Meaning that for them, it has dropped. The others of us wait, distracting ourselves.

The presenter is a lovely woman -- flawless skin, clothes right out of Individualist, size 4. Her low spiked heels have pointy toes, and she apologizes for hobbling on them, explaining how she sprained her knee earlier in the day.

 “Please, just take off your shoes,” I say.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” the young doctor says. She’s presenting, after all.

  She begins her power point in the manner of a tech support guy in Bangalore who insists on guiding you through pages one through ten of the troubleshooting instructions even after you’ve explained that you’ve already done all of those things.

At slide number 15, we learn some of the risk factors for breast cancer. Did you know that if you’ve already had breast cancer, you’re at high risk of getting it?

We learn how much radiation is in which kind of scan and the pale woman with bright blue eyes and cancer already in her lungs asks softly what the risk/reward balance is with getting so many CTs.

 “Something we in medicine always have to weigh,” says the doctor who won’t remove her spiky heels.

Thank you, we all say when it is over, some of us scuttling out immediately in our flat, please-don’t-look-at-us shoes, some sticking around for hugs. I hug once, then scuttle, and can’t shake from my mind which women in that room probably won’t be around by the time that new 3-D tumor scanning device we just learned about is in hospitals everywhere,

I pass shoes, shoes, shoes. Yellow, green… and it seems orange is the color again for spring. Wasn’t orange the color just last year?  Or was that Before? I don’t have to care.

I don’t really need more shoes. In scuffed lace-up ankle boots with worn rubber heels I walk through the rain and to my car, vowing to stay away from Nordstrom for a while.  Just keep walking, walking in these shoes. Same old beautiful shoes.