November! Red, burgundy, and golden leaves, orange pumpkins, and, where I live, often gray skies and white snow.
I recently learned that November also sports a white ribbon – for Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
Unfortunately, I learned that because a friend was diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year.
A NON-SMOKING friend.
Through the diagnosis and subsequent testing, she learned that there is a genetic mutation that results in many types of cancers but most frequently lung cancer…in non-smokers.
Cancer is hard enough. I imagine having to share a lung cancer diagnosis is doubly hard. Our first thought hearing someone has lung cancer is, “Well, you must have done this to yourself,” right? Because only smokers get lung cancer.
Except she didn’t. Because she isn’t.
This came out of nowhere, a random and very cruel mix up in a gene.
I know what that’s like because a gene not doing what it should have done is the reason my son has epilepsy. It’s the reason I wear purple multiple times a year (including November, which is also Epilepsy Awareness Month).
My friend has a great sense of humor and has used that as one of her tools in this new battle. She hates social media so sends emails to keep us all updated and peppers them with humor.
A recent one read, “As a show of my appreciation for your support of my lung cancer fight, for lung cancer awareness month coming up in November, I’d like to get you a Fu** Lung Cancer shirt so you can show your support of f****** cancer everywhere.”
A sentiment I totally understand because I’ve used that word in conjunction with epilepsy a time or two…but didn’t think I should wear it in front of my 13-year-old. She kindly understood and said she’d find something else.
Fast forward to a package in my mailbox (because we live in different states) and a shirt with a white flowered-lung design on it.
White. Purple. Pink. Red. So many colors for so many diagnoses.
But what do those colors really signify? Those colors are reminders we aren’t alone in the diagnosis. Those colors literally show us that someone else is walking this painful, scary, heartbreaking path right next to us.
Even when I can’t be right next to her.
