[v-ness]

dear marcia - i am sorry for the loss of your friend. i understand how you feel in a way, though not as intensely. my sister's friend was diagnosed with stage 3 triple negative breast cancer about a year and a half ago and because of her experience i started doing breast self exams frequently in earnest and 5 months after a clean mammo found this tumor. at the same time she was experiencing infection problems with her mastectomy over the summer that kept her from getting the reconstruction she wanted. and then 2 months after my diagnosis she was told it had metastasized to her brain. i felt awful for her. she retreated from pretty everyone and everything, but my sister got to see her periodically and brought her the Love, Medicine & Miracles book i liked so much. pam read it and told jen she was visualizing being here in the spring and working in her garden. it didn't work like that, though. instead she died on my very last day of chemo. i wasn't rejoicing being done with chemo anyway, but that certainly put a pall over it. and then at the funeral my mother dragged me over to her mother and tearfully told her "because of pam, my daughter is going to live". i wanted to sink into the ground because this woman had just lost her only daughter. i doubt that seeing me standing there was any comfort. i felt a sense of guilt instead that i know isn't rational. i don't even mention it to anyone in regular life because i doubt they'd understand at all. but here others do know what these kinds of thoughts are like. i'm glad you came and talked about it and hope that you take care of yourself to beat this depression back. valerie