GOOD TIDINGS

Over the past twenty four hours, I have met or had e-mails from eight of my former teaching colleagues. Daily I am humbled and renewed by my wonderful support system. It’s always a pleasure to touch base with old friends and, in the case of my meeting with lifelong friend Bob Lato, do some reminiscing about the good old days. Turning the clock back is such a pleasant escape from my present reality of cancer.

I am doing well of late as I await a PET scan on December 2 at Sunnybrook to investigate whether or not I’ve kicked my cancer to the curb. Operating at about 79% (not quite on the honour roll), I’m still on the mend and don’t think I merit the term robust, Bob’s descriptor of how I looked to him. Then again, the Webster Dictionary lists full-bodied as one of the meanings of robust so maybe he was referring to my weight gain.

I have come to appreciate that speaking to someone with cancer can be challenging for some people. One former colleague, Philip B, said it took him weeks to summon up the courage to call me. Another friend, unable to speak with me in person, relays his best wishes through a mutual friend.

I fully understand such trepidation and wonder how I would handle the situation if the roles were reversed. Just what do you day to a person going through cancer?

Well, here’s what not to say.

“Hi, hope everything is going well.”
“Hello, you look good. I thought you’d look terrible.”
“Beside your cancer, how are things going?”

Yikes! Assuming everything is going well limits any meaningful dialogue from the outset. It minimizes what the cancer patient is going through and says that the greeter doesn’t want to hear any negativity.

The cancer battle is a daily struggle, a psychological as well as a physical roller coaster.
No two days are the same. In fact, sometimes no two hours are the same. To acknowledge this state of flux and to elicit a substantive response from the cancer victim, more appropriate greetings are:

“Hi, how are you doing today?” or,
“So good to see you. How are you feeling now?”

Hope this is helpful to some. Now I’d better take off my teacher hat before I begin to sound too much like Dr. Phil. Wow, without the hat, I even look like him.