Sex is like therapy for cancer!

My best friend’s mother is having heart surgery tomorrow morning. Twenty years ago, she was misdiagnosed for cervical cancer, it had spread, she had to have most of her intestines removed, and she has been fighting for her life ever since. Lymphedema, broken hips, wheelchairs, complications, she has more than nine lives. She inspires me with her will to live. I used to joke to her that if she were caught in 9-11, she would be one of the ones crawling out of the rubble.

When she was young, she used to climb through the window into the bedroom of my best friend’s father. She even kept a stool out underneath the window. She broke all the rules. Whenever they fight, he always retaliates with, “Hey, you chased me.”

She understands my dark humor. She even has some of her own. When giving me relationship advice, she once said, “Well, when you’re sick or in a fight, the last thing you really want is his dick in your mouth.”

She wanted me to pass along how ginger works for nausea brought on by chemo. She sent me a card and wrote, “Sex is like therapy for cancer! (very intensely healing!)”

In the card, she also quoted Nietzsche, “Amor fati—the Love of your fate, which is in fact your life.” She continues to write, “As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life you have unraveled the whole thing. Furthermore, the more challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimulated and affirmed the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it. The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain the greater life’s reply.”

She was one of the strongest influences on me in high school with her belief in fate. I used to go over to their house and she would tell me stories of her life, how she felt her husband was her fate, how she was so pulled to him, how her children and everything in her life was meant to be. When I saw The Business of Being Born, she told me about her own home birth with my best friend, how she would make people view the slide show when they would come visit and they must have thought her crazy. I was so moved by her free spirit, the normalcy of sharing your home birth on a slide show. I assured her she is not crazy, that that is something I would do—but then we both realized that that is the reason we love each other—so we can feel normal around each other! I thank her all the time for having my best friend.

She taught me to send a card when he pulled away when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She said to send him one every day for a week just saying you make my life better knowing you. Or I'm thinking of you. Just something simple she said to let him know he is in my thoughts, that I care.

I am better for knowing all of them.

Her affirmation is, "Every day in every way I'm getting better."

She is making me better by getting better.