It’s two days following my second chemotherapy treatment and I am deep into a migraine. A more apt description, perhaps, would be to say that the top of my head is on fire. I am pink from the steroids that must be taken with the treatment. And my hair, which started coming out on Christmas Eve, is falling out strand-by-strand-by-strand. It is time for a second guest blog. This one is from my friend Kathy C. I met Kathy twenty-three years ago when we worked for the same publishing house. She is a freelance writer and has covered everything from travel to parenting.

It is very difficult to write this blog entry because I do not feel worthy to be stepping on this page. I mean, it is my dear friend Juli’s blog, after all, and her story and her suffering. But here goes . . .

My initial idea for this blog item was to post a mini collection of insights from women I know who have survived cancer (and I know more than a handful). I e-mailed them and expected an overwhelming response filled with encouragement and pithy quotes. But I only heard from one person, two others I never got a response from, and the last friend told me she just could not write about the topic at all.

It was just today that it occurred to me that breast cancer must be the most intimate, awkward, and shocking disease out there. It hits with little to no warning, and it hits the most female part of a woman’s body, and it makes some people feel very uncomfortable to know someone with breast cancer because they don’t know what to say or they wind up saying something quite stupid.

From that minute sampling of friends who didn’t write back to me, their non-response spoke volumes about the aftermath of cancer and how emotional healing will take some time. I have the utmost respect for women going through the torture of “treatment” and Juli, your continued openness about what is happening to you and how you feel about it seems to be excellent therapy to release that complex array of feelings associated with this.

What you write about, Juli, helps me and many others to understand what you are going through. The rawness of it all is painful for me to read about, but I thank you for sharing your soul. I hope your blog opens the doors to more women, especially those who are having a difficult time coping. I hope that this blog will encourage other cancer patients to give themselves permission to rant and cry online and laugh as well. Thanks, Juli, for being real.