There is no alternative.

At the beginning of July something awful happened.  It didn't happen to me or my family, but it may as well have.  My best friend, the one I turn to in times of crisis, in time of joy, was diagnosed with leukemia.  She rang me the day before she got the diagnosis, telling me she had been for a blood test, the GP had rung four hours later saying she needed to come in, that there were some anomalies in her white blood cell count.  We didn't know at that point what was wrong and already we cried and cried.  Andrea floating all these horrible possibilites and me denying all these notions as even possibilities, while inside my stomach was twisted, my mouth was dry, my eyes were wet and I was imagining the same things all the while my mouth belied it.

The next day she went to see her doctor.  It was leukemia.

The tears and anguish as we spoke on the phone,  Not acute, thank god, not acute.  But still, that awful word.  Cancer.

After all the horror and all the tears of the first few frantic days had passed, Wikipedia gave me some information and some understanding.  It is Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.  It is treatable and the prognosis is good - if you are going to get cancer, this is the kind that you want!  She has had oral chemotherapy and will then take medication, probably indefinitely, to inhibit the CML and allow the regrowth of normal bone marrow.  While I was researching this there was one sentence that lodged inside me, and which I look to whenever I start to worry about her

"CML is the first cancer in which a medical treatment (imatinib) can give to the treated patients a normal life expectancy"

There are many reasons why this awful word, this cancer, was such a devastating diagnosis.  She is the only child of wonderful parents who live across the world.  She is an amazing wife to a man who would be lost without her.  She is an awesome mother to 4 wonderful kids, the youngest of whom is only 1 year old.  She is a loving, generous, funny and wise friend to an army of friends who would happily march in support of her. 

But I wasn't thinking about any of these people when she first told me.  I was selfish.  I only thought of me, of my loss.  Of how unbearable it would be if something happened to this woman who is my rock.  Who is my person.  My turn to.  I did soon start to think of them, but I have to confess that my first thoughts were concerned with how necessary she is to me.

She has so many people who love her, who will carry her when she needs it and will rejoice with her when she's feeling strong.  Who will work hard to make sure that she is physically and mentally in a good place.

Andrea will be one of the ones who has a normal life expectancy.  There is no alternative.