Dear astra:

I see your first priority at this time being, clearly: staying alive and healing from cancer. Please keep yourself as calm as possible, attend all your radiation and other medical appointments, plan your life with the principle of one-day-at-a-time. Keep your daily routine as it has been. And do post here anytime you want to express your thoughts and feelings. I will read and reply to you every time you choose to post.

Regarding you having told your co workers that you suffer from cancer and attend an aggressive treatment, radiation: when most people hear such news, they feel uncomfortable, wishing they didn’t hear it at all (at least, not when the person telling the news is not a family member or close friend), almost fearing they will “catch” the disease.

Every person is aware that she/ he may become sick with cancer anytime, and hearing that you suffer from it, reminds them of this scary reality and they experience this scary thought: it can happen to me, and to anyone in my life who I care for deeply.

Next point: you didn’t share how your co workers in the “war room” excluded you. You shared that you “did not have a single thing to contribute to the discussion” and that you excused yourself from there so to  work at your desk- how did they exclude you and weren’t you the one choosing to work at your desk (rather than “being isolated”) by your co workers?

You shared that you chose to leave the banana cake celebration- did your co worker behave differently toward you during the celebration?

Another point: once you shared what you shared with your co worker, understandably, you expected some empathy, some emotional support. If you got none of that, if people behaved as if you didn’t tell them anything important- that in itself hurts. The thought may be something like: I told them that I may die and they act like nothing happened, life and death is happening for me, and everyone around me acts like my life doesn’t matter!

Is that kind of thought running through you?

I hope to read more from you soon.

anita