The Sisterhood of the Traveling Wristbands

September 24, 2009

This year marks my 5 year anniversary of having had (breast) cancer and having (hopefully) beaten it. (I'll know I beat it when I die of something else, which is not my original line, I was told that in the oncology room, but I use it all the time because it says it all.)

So I was sitting in the waiting area (which was packed by the way, UGH) and I happened to hear the woman next to me talking on her cell phone. It seemed to me by the way she talked to somebody on the other end of the line that she was rattled. Which I figured either meant that this cancer thing was still fresh in her life, still new and scary, and she was trying to keep her composure (but hell, with cancer breathing down your neck, that's not easy) or else she was just having a bad day and she couldn't deal with her reality today. Either way, I've been in both of those places, so it's all understandable to me. Cancer stinks. End of story. 

But just to make sure, I checked her wrist to see if she had a band. That's how I learned 5 years ago as I sat in that waiting room myself, a new cancer patient, who else was in my boat. If you had the patient wristband (with your name and birth date on it) you were in my boat. If you didn't, you were a friend or family member trying to help keep the "boat" afloat.

I didn't say anything to this woman, who was maybe in her 50's or early 60's. Not even when she got off the phone, and was flipping through a magazine (I remember doing that 5 years ago and not reading a single word) because sometimes people need their space. And I felt like this woman needed her space. I figured if an opportunity arises, I'll make small talk, but not now. For now I'll just be here, and maybe she'll see my wristband and know I am with her. I am a patient, too. I am one of her "kind". I looked down at her wristband and I looked at mine and in the silence between us I felt a deafening connection.

Within a few moments, a young woman came into the waiting area, and it didn't take me long to figure out that this young girl was the woman's daughter. She was twenty-something and vibrant and on her own cell phone talking to somebody about doing a breast cancer magazine layout and I knew she must work in the creative field, maybe marketing or writing. Then she talked to someone on the phone about music and I was thinking maybe she was a musician--when I leaned my head back and I hit the framed picture that was hanging behind my head on the wall. 

The second I hit it I felt it move and I turned to look behind me, hoping the picture wasn't coming crashing down. Fortunately for me it wasn't, but it was swinging precariously and this young girl, who was now sitting next to me in the seat between her mom and me, looked at me and our eyes got wide. That was how we started talking--"oh please," I said, "this picture can NOT fall on you. Me, yes--but you? I don't even know you." And we both laughed.

As we talked, her mom joined the conversation, and we all decided that cancer stinks and this young girl, a musician and singer-songwriter, is committed to fighting breast cancer in whatever way she can. Her mom has it, and that's about as close as it gets. Just ask my daughter, she'll tell you.

Within a few minutes, the nurse called my name to go into see my doctor. I smiled a goodbye and got up to go, but as I did so I looked straight at the mother. We hadn't really had too much direct cancer conversation, but as I got up, I leaned over and I flashed her my wristband. "Hang in there. I have the wristband too." And then I added, "Sisterhood." 

Later that night, I emailed this woman's daughter, who is indeed a singer-songwriter (she gave me her card). I told her that I got on her website and really liked her music. 

Then I wanted to write something to her mom. I wanted to tell her that she is not alone, though I am sure she feels like it. But she's not--she is part of the sisterhood that none of us wanted to be in but now that we are, we are marked and we are real. (I know men get breast cancer and I feel for them too; here I am addressing the loss of breasts that changes the female in a different way than it does the male.)

Just like the wristband that they make you wear at the cancer center so that they don't mix you up with somebody else, we are a group designated by disease but not alone in our illness. We have people. 

We are a big group, a varied group, of mothers and daughters who are fighting this thing in our own way, with our treatment plans, our families beside us, and our white paper bracelets. We are a unified, terrified, full-of-pride group of people who must lean on each other any way we can, even in snatches of time stolen in a waiting room full of people. 

And then something flashed in my mind: a book I read a few summers ago, the one about the 4 girls who share a pair of jeans and all the adventures they have and the growing they do while encased in these jeans--it was called "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." It was a good read and there were sequels and I think a movie.

But as I sat there writing this email I felt a sisterhood of my own: a sisterhood with this woman's mother, and all the woman in that waiting room today, and all the women who ever had or have to wear those wristbands and sit in waiting rooms not just in Boston but in Denver and New York and San Francisco and LA, and hear a doctor tell them they must lose their breasts, or a breast, or a piece of their breast, a slice of their womanhood, a defining portion of what makes them appear female. 

And how they have to push themselves to make it through, to survive, to grow, to be stronger than the disease, to push back, to thrive, to live.

And I found myself ending my email with: "I hope your mom had a good appointment today. Tell her to hang in there--she is not alone. We are out there with her--

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Wristbands."