Lessons in friendship

This hasn't been an easy week. I lost a really good friend to cancer.

Cancer leads to a different kind of friendship. The relationships you build with others going through it are deep, quick, pretty unbounded, and sometimes, just way too short.

I have had a few friends like this. The first, I met in 2018. We were more acquaintances for a while, but he had an aggressive cancer. He became somewhat of a citizen scientist and forced his doctors to sequence his genome in the name of finding clinical trials that would map to his mutations. What is now standard, he had to fight for. He made a difference for a lot of people.

We became much closer after my diagnosis. He was a huge support and actually mentored me in what life is like dealing with cancer and he taught me all of the tricks that no one tells you about (social security disability for example). He passed on about a year ago, but he is a person that really influenced me and taught me a lot that I now pass onto others. His name is Bryce Olson.

Bryce was way to young to go but that's what happens in this world.

This week, I lost a new close friend, Stephanie Hruby. Steph and I shared a lot. She had life experiences, enjoyed her life, had a great family, was into things like naturopaths and integrative treatments (like I am), couldn't deal with politics (governmental, cancer, interpersonal) and had a great sense of humor. We hit it off the first time we met and never looked back. We were even discussing planning NETs Prom together!

My life is changed again with her loss. It happened pretty quickly over about 6 months or so.

I guess this is the hand we are dealt. When you are sick, you meet others who are sick too. And becoming friends with others like you is incredible for the relationships, the lack of pretense and the shared outlooks. It makes it that much harder when those relationships end.

I don't really know what else to say. I love Bryce and I love Steph whether they are here are not. I am beyond indebted to both of them for the kindness, support, shared feelings, laughter, entertainment, thoughtful discussions, dislike of mean people and politics. There is no question that I still have a lot of tears to shed over both of them.