Sunday, April 26, 2009

Friends

A lot of things have been going around lately about the importance of friends and social circles for getting over cancer. I'm sort of piggybacking off of these things, mainly because they are timely.

Since 2005, I've gone into each spring on my low iodine diet, hypo, and then radiated. I'm pretty open with the fact that I have cancer... but at the same time, I don't like the attention... or having my friends feel bad or worries, or put in the position of saying the wrong thing... etc. But, I still need my support, but without the burden of worrying. This might fly against what others think should be done, and the first and even the second, i didn't mind so much. But when it became an every year issues, it just seems ridiculous to put people through the same stuff again and again.

So what I do each year is throw a party. The Radioactive Robin Wine Party. You know, b/c being on the iodine diet you can still drink wine. And so its become tradition. This year's party was last night. It was called the 4th annual NON-Radioactive Robin Wine Party: the Nuclear Fallout. I'm wordy, what can i say. This year was particularly important to me. I graduated w/ my masters yesterday (law is in another couple of weeks 8D). And this year, as the title implies I'm not radioactive, and I'm actually moving. It was also important to me to have all my friends. Only a handful, like 4, know that things didn't go well this year, and that I tested positive for the cancer, and that I'm just supposed to be sitting and waiting it out.

So for me, having everyone around means a lot more to me than I might let them know. I prefer having my friends celebrate things with me, and just hang out. It makes me feel normal...

2 comments:

Joanna Isbill said...

In the year after you were first diagnosed, was it hard for you be around friends and people you used to hang out with all the time? I've had a hard time being myself with people I used to hang with all the time b/c I am different and I feel like they don't understand me anymore. I was just wondering if you went through anything similar.

robs said...

Yeah, it was. Things actually happened in a pretty coordinated way though. I got diagnosed at the end of my senior year of college, so I graduated, did radiation over the summer, and started up at a new school. My best friend moved out of state. And things just... shifted. I think part of it is b/c people don't know how to treat you when things change, and you don't really feel like the same person you were... and so everyone backs off, both you and friends. At least thats how things happened for me.