Recently I had the privilege of attending the opening DVAA Salon Series, which featured three courageous women who were willing to share their cancer journey with a smallish audience. The panelists were Marla Puccetti, Ramona Jan and Teresa Tulipano.

The topic was how to speak to someone with cancer in a sensitive and informed way. Much of the panelist commentary revolved around what not to say when meeting a person they know has cancer. Don’t ask, “How are you?” unless you really want to know. Don’t say, “Well, you look good!” because the cancer patient has just lost 30 pounds due to diarrhea and other medication side effects.  

And yet, having been on the other side of this issue myself in the past, I believe most people rely on the tried-and-true greetings out of fear, and because they are at a loss—how do they meet the trauma and suffering of a cancer patient?

There remains a lot of shame around a cancer diagnosis. People look for causes—what went wrong that your body turned against you in this way? And although cancer research has made leaps and bounds in recent years, there is as yet no cure for cancer. If you get it once, it likely will creep back, like the crab it is named for. 

What causes cancer is largely a mystery. There are certain environmental factors that can lead to cancer, such as the victims who worked during the toxic 9/11 cleanup; or a fit friend of mine who never smoked, yet contracted a virulent form of lung cancer perhaps caused by the polluted water that spilled from the Raritan Bay into the North Jersey shore, where he surfed for all of his too-short life.

I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma after a summer of extreme pain in my hip. An MRI uncovered a cancerous lesion that led to an emergency hip replacement and removal of the lesion that had grown out of the disordered—cancerous—cells in my bone marrow. I underwent radiation and nine months of infusion chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC. I left my Sullivan County home in the woods for a sublet in NYC that I shared with my daughter, my caretaker during those months. Then I underwent a bone marrow transplant, accompanied by my sister and preceded by a massive dose of chemo meant to kill whatever nasty cancerous cells were lingering in my bone marrow. This dose caused all my hair fall to out, my platelets were non-existent, and I was sick for weeks, because the chemo was designed to kill everything in my body. I was allowed home after a certain point, but my activities were curtailed, and I had to wear a mask in public. (Eventually, I had to re-do all my childhood vaccinations.) 

The irony of the whole thing was that just as I started to truly recover and could rejoin swimming and yoga classes, the pandemic hit. So, I was in a mask again. The difference was—so was everyone else!

I trusted my medical team and did every single thing they told me to do. They’ve shepherded me into a remission that is now five years old. Every day I thank God for my body, for my team, for science and cancer research. Cancer is still a killer: in 2024, nearly one in four people died of cancer. Chances for survival depend on so many factors—age, quality of the care and support you are given, your general health and also what type of cancer you have. Some forms of cancer are more deadly than others, and some of us are just lucky or unlucky as far as healing goes. Apart from environmental factors, there is nothing we can do to prevent cancer from growing in our bodies.

It’s vital that we remain open to communication about the journey, for us and our loved ones. Any of us at any time could join a club that no one wants to be a member of. But there is no shame in it, as one panelist stressed. And there are no wrong questions.

I recognize that I am one of the lucky ones, and for as long as it lasts, I greet every day with supreme gratitude, and hope.

Mary Greene worked for the River Reporter as an editor and copy editor, and for the DVAA as a grants coordinator before her retirement in 2018. For many years she taught poetry workshops for children and adults as head of the Upper Delaware Writers Collective.