Drinking Lemonade

A couple days ago I was at the pool and I saw a friend of mine I hadn't seen in several months. I'll call her "Mary", which isn't her real name. I asked how she'd been, and she told me she had had cancer. I had heard her, the coach, and a couple of other talking about skin cancer when I came out of the locker room, so I asked her, "skin cancer?" Skin cancer is very common here in Colorado, especially among those of us of a "certain" age (40s) who like to spend lots of time outside. Mary said, "No", and pointed to her right breast.

I was shocked and mumbled something hopefully sympathetic. My friend is younger than me, looked great, was at masters swim practice, and told me she had just come from the weight room. The lanes at our practice are organized by ability. Mary got in the same lane as I, which was fantastic. I remember her being slower than me, but today Mary was keeping up just fine.

Over the course of the practice, I asked her how she was doing. It had been six months since her mastectomy. She was still having neck pains. She still was afraid to be in any races. More than once, she told me, she had signed up for a race but not shown up. (A month before her surgery Mary had completed Ironman Canada.)

Mary also told me that when she had her surgery she had them do an augmentation at the same time. (I mentioned earlier that she looked great.) "I had lemons and I made lemonade," she told me.

"More like making grapefruits out of lemons," I replied.

"Actually, more like melons."

I had to agree.