mekyria | Belly dance friends and bad news

My dance mom went in for breastcancer surgery last week. She send a message on Monday that she was at home, recovering and considering everything she was doing okay. They removed one breast and two lymphnodes. Yesterday she let us know that the lymph nodes weren’t ‘clean’ and that she has to consult the specialist on what’s next. Probably chemo and more scans. She tries to stay positive but has a hard time.

She is a rather private person and has only told a couple of her closest dance friends. But she is widely known in our dance community by all of my dance friends. The dance friends who try to pick dates to meet up, and the ones I usually talk about what’s up and how we’re doing. I don’t want to tell them about L because I respect her choice to keep her illness and treatment private. People mean well but she doesn’t want flowers, cards, visits or phone calls. But it is hard to not tell my closest dance friends that I can’t meet them because I want to visit her.

I hope the treatment she’s getting will help her overcome her cancer and there won’t be anything to talk about in a year or so. In the meantime, it sucks and I am so scared of losing her. She was my dance mentor for over six years, we went on tours together, shared so much of the ups and downs in our lives. She’s 53 and way too young to have her story end here.