What does Cancer Look like?

Yesterday I had some fence time with my neighbors.  I had noticed that they hadn't been around in a while and asked if they had been traveling.  No, he replied, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and we have been going to the doctors.  Of course, I could sympathize with them. It's funny how you really don't talk to you neighbors about "the big stuff" usually.

We have lived next door to each other for six and a half years.  They knew that I had cancer the last few years (they watched as the church kids built me a deck for easy access to the backyard).  But as we stood there talking, I told them that I, too, had breast cancer 9 years ago.  I think that scared her a bit.  She was sure that once she had the cancer removed and did the radiation treatment, she could close that book.  I explained that mine had begun as breast cancer, but that it metastasized in 2010 in the bones, but that it is still breast cancer.  People don't usually understand that unless they have been through either themselves or with a family member or close friend.

They asked lots of questions which I answered as best as I could.  When they asked if I had chemo, I explained that I had chemo in 2003 with the original diagnosis, but that now I was on an oral chemo that I will continue to take as long as it works. I got the usual response "wow, you look great."

It got me thinking about what folks usually expect to see someone look like when they hear that someone has cancer.  When people meet me for the first time they don't know that I have cancer.  They are shocked and I get the "wow, you look great" comment.  What does that mean?  Do I look great? or do I look great for someone with cancer?  Except for a slight limp (from my hip surgery) there isn't any reason someone seeing me for the first time would even imagine that I have cancer.

So what does cancer look like?  Having spent A LOT of time in the infusion room at Texas Oncology, I can tell you that cancer looks like just about anything.  A mother of small kids, a teenager, an old man, a recent retiree.  The faces would surprise you.  It doesn't look like the stereotypical picture of a person looking drawn and dying in a hospital bed.  It looks like the person in the mirror.