When I was diagnosed with lung cancer I immediately understood that loss was going to play a big part in my life. What I didn’t understand was that it wouldn’t all be personal. You see, I never anticipated becoming close to so many others with cancer—it just wasn’t part of my initial game plan.
However, once I was restaged to IV I knew I couldn’t go it alone anymore and I began to seek out others with lung cancer. Not long after I also took my first steps into advocacy and before I knew it, I had a lot of friends who shared my diagnosis.
The upside to these relationships is obvious–no one knows better what it is like to have this disease than someone who is living with it. The downside is that cancer is a brutal and relentless foe and a lot of my friends haven’t made it.
Each time it’s a real punch in the heart.
Yesterday I learned that my dear friend Ginger Wyler Saunders had passed away. I met Ginger some years ago in the Whole Foods down the street from MGH. We were sitting across from each other at a crowded table during the busy lunch hour and all was chaos around us. She looked at me and said ‘We are the two quietest people here.’ With that we began to chat and I learned that she had also been diagnosed with lung cancer–twenty six years earlier. I think I asked her if I could touch her–I was so amazed to meet someone who had lived for such an extended period post diagnosis.
Anyway, we became pals. We emailed, met for lunch, and called occasionally as well. Sadly, Ginger was diagnosed with a second cancer; ovarian. She fought tenaciously but gained little ground. Yesterday her daughters let me know that she was gone. Today I sat at what I thought was perhaps the same table at Whole Foods. And I wept rather openly as I ate. I love you Ginger–cancer can’t take that.
Linnea and Ginger 3/11
life and breath: outliving lung cancer 