When I first entered the Kingdom of Patients, I was not interested in becoming friends with my residents. Only 22 years old, with limited knowledge of serious illness or loss, I found the idea of a cancer support group for a totally frustrated young person who I don’t want to feel too comfortable with the identity of a cancer patient. Not surprisingly, after a year of treatment, I was as lonely and lonely as I had been in my life.
When it comes to friendship, I always prioritize quantity over quality. Attending six schools on three continents before the age of 12 means I am skilled in building friendships, but not necessarily maintaining them. While walking around, I kept pen communications in Switzerland with my best friend Molly in upstate New York and my best friend Ranya in Tunisia and my best friend Eléonore. But when (or even) we will meet again without a clear understanding of what we are, and with all the addresses changing, our letters will set Peter apart. The information I get from it is that relationships have a shelf life.
In college, I was a social butterfly, running across groups, building fast but not necessarily deep friendships. When I was sick, many of my friends went missing, and I felt hurt, angry and betrayed. As time goes by, I start to realize that their failure is not a big failure - of course, the beer-pong people I played were not by my bed when my hair fell off. Maintaining relationships through such crises requires stronger bonds.
Then one day, I was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital, a bald woman wearing a knitted ski hat on her bald head, and a mask across her hollow cheeks landed on the chair next to me. Her name is Anjali, she is beautiful and petite, with a faint skin and a nose that looks like me. Although shorter than me and fragile months of rest, she exudes ferocity.
"I know who you are," she said. "You write that fucking column." She means: Hello, nice to meet you. I'm not good at reading her lines at all.
As time goes by, we exchange stories and learn that we have a lot in common - immigration stories, the only kid who doesn’t speak English on the first day of school, feels like it’s inappropriate wherever we go. I learned that her parents were dead, she was alienated from her brother, and she never returned to the phone call about her bone donor. I began to understand that's why she wore so much armor: She felt she had to protect herself in order to survive.
Anjali and I shared the same diagnosis. We performed the same chemotherapy regimen at Mount Sinai Hospital, which is managed by the same doctor. We both moved to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and had a bone marrow transplant at the same time. One hundred days after transplantation, we all obtained biopsy results. Mine comes back to clean: no signs of leukemia. Her shows she has relapsed and further treatment is not an option.
At that time, I was 24 years old. I never had a caregiver, let alone accompanying someone as they approach the finish line. But I understand the pain of keeping people from showing up - this is my chance to show up. Over the next few months, I brought Anjali's food, went to the doctor with her, and took me home on holidays. Then, when she was sick and weak enough to live alone at home, I called an ambulance to take her to the hospice ward at Bellevue Hospital.
When the ambulance arrived, Anjali looked at me and screamed. She called me a traitor, said I was a terrible friend, said she hated me. But I didn't accept it myself. I know fear and pain can make you angry. I personally lashed out at my loved ones in a way that I didn’t know I was capable of. I know her anger is not for me, but for a world she never quite belongs to, and she will soon walk out of it.
I rode behind that ambulance with her and next week I held a vigil next to her bed. The day before I passed away, I also met Melissa and Max in treatment, another friend named MJ, who is a cancer survivor (he may or may not have volunteered as our weed supplier in the pre-medical marijuana era). A talented musician MJ brought the guitar, a shruti box and harmonica and played several songs, including Sharon Van Etten's "Love More". We all sing: "She makes me love/She makes me love/She makes me love even more." Anjali is so close to the veil that her hearing fails. I don't know if she could actually hear the music or just see us experiencing it, but it seemed to make her happy.
I remember a nurse looking at us from the corridor. Later, she told me that in all her years of work in hospice, she had never seen other bald young people, whose tolerant bodies would attract companions in the last few days. I know why she was caught by her eyes. It is terrible to watch anyone die, and it is even more terrible to watch someone die of a disease that may kill you. No one would blame us for avoiding this, but we are all shocked that Anjali has no family. Her biggest fear is that she will die alone and we won't let that happen.
Those days were still one of the most beautiful and meaningful experiences of my life. I feel like I have to meet the child Anjali - Anjali who has not been hurt, sold or abandoned by the world. She softened; she became calm. Whenever her eyelids trembled, she would reach for my hand. She was so thin that in contrast to her huge black brown eyes seemed to be bigger. She looks gentle, open, unarmed, and she seems to be prejudiced.
When we think of love, we think of fairy tales of romance and happiness. By telling this story, I want to call something different - see, understand and emerge the radical power of another person. As Alain de Botton Therapy journeythis word like “Related to romance and sensibility, we ignore the key role it plays in helping us stay alive during overwhelming psychological confusion and grief.”
During my four years of treatment, the disease caused a huge loss. I lost my romantic relationship, my sense of self and my trust in the future. I lost my friend - Anjali, then Melissa, then Max. I fell deeply into sorrow, and I felt the almost primitive urge to close, retreating like a wounded animal. I think, If I never get close to anyone again, I will never be hurt again.
But I learned another lesson. Disease has taught me how much we need each other, how we enter the world, how we need so much care, how we die requires so much care, how we get this from the people we love and love us: our family - the people we choose - our partners, our friends, our communities, our communities.
I know I have to keep turning to love and others to deal with my sadness and uncertainty. Loneliness is a health issue – studies have shown that social isolation is associated with greater risks of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and early death, and social disconnection may be the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Back in 2017, then-American surgeon Vivek Murthy began to draw attention to loneliness and believed that we could live a healthier and fulfilling life by enhancing our relationships. "Assing a friend's call," he wrote in a 2023 report. "Take a moment to share a meal. Listen to the distraction of your phone. Perform service behavior."
Each of these proposed actions is a generous act: to be fully present, to listen, to dedicate oneself to another. Of course, this cannot be done with a trading mindset. It feels bad that people can feel whether you only help them to make them obliged to help you. What I'm talking about is making connections with another person itself. Knowing that someone just knows them.
Anjali died on Valentine's Day. The last thing she said to me was like.
This article is from Alchemy book.
* Illustration of Akshita Chandra / Atlantic Ocean. Source: AC. Nowell / L. Prang & Co. /Library of Congress; Ilbusca / Getty.