Support Group

I went to a breast cancer support group meeting this week. This was the second support group I have ever attended. My first experience involved a group of people dealing with marriage separation. During the late nineties, my husband and I split up for a while. I was pretty devastated. A lot more devastated than I am now about breast cancer. I remember that the first thing I noticed walking into that gloomy church basement that reeked of loneliness and resentment, was that I was the youngest person there.

The facilitator had each of us go around the room to tell our sad story of desertion (I'm pretty sure there were no "deserters" in the group). When the woman who had separated from her husband ten years ago finished telling her story, that she must have told thousands of times, I left. It was obvious that the support group strategy was not for me. I had no intention of mourning my loss for more than a couple of months.

The first thing I noticed about the breast cancer group was that I was one of the oldest. Why are so many women in their thirties and forties under attack by this disease? My own children have experienced far more loss of grown up friends (parents of their friends, in their thirties or forties) to cancer than I did as a child. I can't recall a single one of my childhood friends losing a parent to anything other than divorce. There is the theory that as detection technology improves we find more cancer. But that does not explain the younger woman thing. In fact, the data suggest that the incidence of breast cancer in younger women (under age 50) has been stable, at least between the years 1975 and 2006. I guess it's just me. It's the young ones that find support groups and similar resources useful. People over 50 expect ugly lumps in their lives and perhaps need less support living with them.

The second thing I noticed were all the wigs in the room. I have become quite skilled at spotting wigs. There is no way those things can fool anyone who's on the look out for that particular artifice. I realize that this skill is not too impressive when deployed in a room full of cancer patients, but when your productivity is on the decline, you have to celebrate small accomplishments.

One of the most amazing sensations I experienced during the meeting was how my impression of each woman in the room changed radically during the hour and half we were together. As in the ruined marriage group, the facilitator had each of us in turn tell our cancer story, and explain where we were in the treatment process. Following each story I arrived at a fatuous, myopic judgment about the character of each member of the group.

As the newest and least cancer experienced person in the room, I told my story last. I told them I was having my second treatment this coming week and that I was expecting to lose my hair two days later. I told them that I felt prepared and wasn't too scared, but that it was becoming a more significant milestone than I had planned for it to be. I told them that I was worried about what my bald head would look like and about my fear of seeing the ugly moles and shape of the thing. I told them my plans for cutting my hair in advance and about my preparations for living without it.

And then each bald woman told her hair loss story. And in the telling, each woman impulsively, and without apparent regard to what the woman before her had said or done, removed her wig. Perhaps it sounds schmaltzy, but each woman revealed a head that was so much more beautiful without the costume hair than it was with it. I was awed. I wanted to praise each one of them, tell them how much I respected them, rave about how brave and good I thought they were. Something about a bald head, it radiates dignity and commands respect. That realization feels supportive.