Whyfore the How To

The positive side of my personality is that I am independent. I don’t need direction to start or complete a task; I can walk into any room by myself. I take care of myself; people who worry about me do so because they care, not because they have to.

On the flip side, I am stubborn as an ass. I don’t like when people tell me what to do. The words You Should give me proverbial hives, guaranteeing that whatever advice follows will move to the bottom of my list of ponderables. Oh, I should, should I? Let’s see if that ever happens.

And yet, I still want to give advice. That’s another personality coin side: I think I have all the answers. Positive side: I have some good ideas.

I have knowledge about How To Cancer. I have seen all the sides of Cancer’s coin: from losing my grandmother to breast cancer as a young child, watching my mother survive it when I was a teenager, experiencing my own two bouts of it 15 years apart. I have learned a lot. How to go through it, what to expect, how to care for someone in the middle of it. I know how to do it.

What follows is not — despite my strident tone and clear wisdom — definitive or final. But I’m hoping to impart some insight into what we go through and what our loved ones go through when cancer invades our lives.