A few weeks or so ago, I proclaimed on Facebook that the cancer victory tour was over. The outpouring of support was amazing, but left me feeling a bit guilty. Nothing had actually happened on the health front, more of a mental shift from being someone who had cancer and beat it to being just a normal 41-year-old living in Baltimore, working in Chicago, and getting married in a few months. I never wanted to be defined by it.

The writer David Rakoff uses the term “cancer dilettante” to describe his attitude toward having Hodgkin’s during his 20s. That sums it up nicely:

Cancer? Yeah, I dabbled for a half an year. It didn’t take.

The jokey pose puts people at ease and signals All Clear without them having to ask, but for me it’s also honest one. Most of the time.

At the same time I was diagnosed, our next-door neighbor also found out that she had cancer – a much more serious and wide-spread cancer. We used to chat about how our treatments were going, but it’s recently slimmed down to the shorthand of “how are things, things are ok.” She’s wearing wigs and wraps now and will have maintenance doses of chemo/radiation for the rest of her life.

Another one. I recently spend several days in Bloomington-Normal, IL for work. I didn’t have a rental car, so I took a cabs to and from the hotel to the client. Usually, it was the same cab and driver. It’s that kind of town. My driver for several trips was a chatty lady in her 50s with no filter whatsoever. She told me about her ex-husband. She told me about Steak and Shake’s 3-way chili she had, how tasty is was, and how gassy it made her that night. She told me she wished her ex was around so he would have to smell it under the covers of their bed. I laughed and mentioned that’s called a Dutch Oven, but she wasn’t paying attention. I hoped against hope that I’d get another driver next time.

On the second trip with her, she pointed to a clinic where she’d dropped off someone for some medical treatment. The cabbie then mentioned that she’d recently had a ileostomy bag. I leaned forward. “Really? So did I.”

I suppose that given the number of things she talked about that we’d hit some common ground at some point, but having an ileostomy bag? Neither of us had ever talked to someone who’d had one before. She had had untreated diverticulitis for years. Her takedown surgery was scarcely a month early. She lied to her doctor, telling him she was a dispatcher so go back to work driving and earning tips. By the end of the ride, we were best buddies.

“You still reach for it even though it’s not there?”

“Yes! At night . Did you have a one-piece or two-piece?”

“One piece. I had a two-piece fail on me.”

“Me too! Then I had a blockage. I was back in the hospital for a week.”

“Really?!? I was so paranoid about that.”

Even in the realm of having an ileostomy bag, I got off lucky.

One more. This week was the three-month CT scan and post-surgery clinic check-in. All is well, by the way, but spending time at a Hopkins waiting room is hard reminder of my cancer kiddie-pool status. One of the appointments was with Steve-O, who looking at a computer screen commented it was the 6-month anniversary of my first surgery. Lisa and I looked at each other. I’m not sure if it was relief or disbelief, but we were smiling.