One of the oddities of living with metastatic cancer is the investment that other people have in your illness. It is very strange. There is a woman I know who, when she sees me, will ask how I am. If I say I am fine, she will peer at me closely and probe further. If I continue to maintain that I feel fine, she will radiate disappointment. But, if I say that I am having a bad day she will beam with concern and well wishes and walk away seeming satisfied.

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I reached out to my friends and they were marvelous. They responded with offers of transportation, food, watering my plants, and walking my dog and they kept offering for the year I was in treatment. When I was diagnosed with metastases to the lungs, I again reached out to my friends. They shared my grief, and fear over the future. But then look what happened! The drama is gone and my cancer and I are just hanging out together like an old married couple. Where does that leave my friends?

For sure, when the tumors start to get rambunctous again, the drama will return but what do we do in the meantime? My friends have invested so much in supporting me.  Where is the payoff for them in befriending a boring cancer patient? If I feel good, am I upsetting their expectations? What to do? 

Living with this disease means long stretches of boredom punctuated by highlights of pure terror. It's hard on my friends to stay with me on this roller coaster. Is today a day when I feel like a well person or a sick person? It is the special friend who can take you as you are, support you when you need it, and treat you like a whole person regardless of where the roller coaster is at any given moment.

I am still someone living with stage 4 breast cancer. (I don't feel I can call myself a survivor. Isn't that term for someone who has beaten the disease? I think that's one of those pink ribbon words.) Those of us in this situation are initiates into a dreadful secret society. And, while I have a tendency to freely share information, perhaps only other initiates should share in the intimate details of the stage 4 experience, because only they truly grasp its long term nature and gnarly twists and turns. 

Perhaps it is enough that my friends know I have this terrible disease. More than that, perhaps it is enough that they know that I love them just as I know down into my bone marrow that they love me.  Isn't that all that really matters?