"Now something on the surface it stings..."

I was perusing Facebook and watching Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight when I noticed a status update from a friend of mine. She was offering up prayers for her best friend. I had met Stephanie when I was a bridesmaid and she was the Maid of Honor in my friend Mandy's wedding. She was hugely pregnant at the time but dove into her duties with gusto, despite her burgeoning belly! Since then, we have kept in touch on Facebook, just the occasional "Hey, how are you" or comments on status updates about our kids (she has two, a 4 year old and a 2 year old who was in her belly when I met her).

When I saw Mandy's status, I clicked back through Steph's page and found out that she had gone into the hospital for pain related to kidney stones and a few days later was given a diagnosis of breast cancer after a lumpectomy. Tomorrow, she's having a mastectomy.

Fucking breast cancer. This girl is thirty-one fucking years old.

It's one of those things that's hitting me like a ton of bricks for the strangest of reasons. Steph and I are not close- we merely share a common friend and are friendly towards each other. It's just the situation in general. She's a thirty-one year old mother of young children, married to her college sweetheart and recently made the decision to become a stay-at-home-mom. She's super-sassy and really funny and extra- talkative. She is seriously, truly, the last person that I would ever imagine battling this. It's the ridiculous thing ever. It makes me angry to see this happen to such a young woman. It makes me sad to think of her babies tomorrow, being scared. It makes me upset to think of a young mom like that being in pain. It makes me crazy to think of how her husband is managing all of this. It makes me feel guilty to know what horrible, pathetic care I've been taking of my own body and still being cancer-free. It makes me stab-y, as a woman, to know that preventative care for breast cancer has been threatened. And it fucking pisses me off that this is happening to someone I know.

I know this is a total stream-of-consciousness/careening-runaway-train-of-thought post that very likely is making no sense and is annoying people with my liberal use of the F-word. All I can ask tonight of you, my amazing, wonderful bloggy friends, is to promise, promise, pinky-swear to me that you will take good care of yourselves to put up the best fight possible against stupid things like cancer. Offer up some prayers, even for a fleeting second, for Stephanie's surgery tomorrow and her return to good health. Pray to make it easier to understand when stupid things like this happen.

3 comments

Jenn said...

That's terrible! Prayers will happen in this house!

Shelly said...

=(
praying for stephanie!
cancer is extra stupid.

Anonymous said...

You and Stephanie have my prayers.