A few days ago my husband and I were surprised by a generous gift. The owner of his company had two tickets for a winemaker dinner, which he could not attend. So he gave the tickets to us.

The evening was hosted by the founders of Williamson Wines in Healdsburg, Calif.* The winemakers chose the Solbar, a Michelin Star restaurant in Calistoga, as the site for their dinner.** I cannot speak for the wine, as alcohol does not agree with me, but the meal was nothing short of fantastic. My husband can speak for the wine. He says it was very good indeed.

We arrived home from the Solbar at one o’clock the next morning. The company was that enjoyable, the evening that memorable. When I asked my husband what his favorite memory was, he told me what he’d told his boss. “The best part was seeing my wife laughing and having a blast. I haven’t seen her do that in six months.”

Sometimes my husband, a man who is not so expressive, amazes me. As a foodie, I definitely thought he’d mention the stinging nettle soup or the foie gras confit with poached apricots. As a lover of good wine, I thought he’d talk about the Sovereign, which Bill Williamson poured toward the end of the evening. Bill has bottled only one hundred magnums of this wine, for public sale, at $1,000 per bottle.

Upon reflection, I have to admit I have not been on the happier side of the emotional scale in quite a while. There is a range of feelings that accompanies breast cancer. Laughing with abandon is not one of them.

In their book Breast Cancer - The Complete Guide, doctors Yashar Hirshaut and Peter I. Pressman talk about there being no “particular program” for coping with the emotions of breast cancer. “No sane person,” they write, “would choose to have (the disease) or, having had it, would say it was an ennobling experience. Nobody who has had a grave illness, or who has lived through the experience of surgery, or who has worried about the effects of powerful treatments, would mouth such a platitude.”

Hirshaut and Pressman note that most women experience their highest levels of depression and anxiety right after surgery. How right they are. Until that point, they say, “There has been an enormous amount to get through from the time they first realized something was wrong, through the period of evaluating their choices and making decisions, through the surgery itself. Now they must face picking up their lives again and also coping with whatever further treatment has been decided upon.”

Of course, then come the fears that must be faced before each treatment begins. And the worry about their immediate and long-term effects. And knowing that family members nearby and time zones away are worrying as well.

“Everyone reacts differently to trouble,” write doctors Hirshaut and Pressman. “There is no ‘correct’ way to cope with or get over an experience as trying as breast cancer.” But, according to the doctors, “women are in fact coming through it with intelligence, sensitivity, and a very moving gallantry.”

Why is that not surprising?

*http://www.williamsonwines.com/

**http://www.solagecalistoga.com/