My Looking Glass

Chess Piece. Crap Shoot.

This photo was shot last summer when I was on vacation in Chicago. There's a chess pavilion in Lincoln Park, and this statue pictured is nearby the area where the locals gather to play their afternoon match. It was really an enchanting spot, if only it weren't 95 degrees with 95 percent humidity on an otherwise pleasant summer day.

But I digress; that's not what I wanted to write about.

I received some extremely unexpected news from one of my closest lifelong friends today. Her husband has breast cancer. He's my age, 42, and he's having a double mastectomy on Thursday. I'm so stunned that I can barely process a coherent thought about it. They have a 5-year-old daughter, and somehow I had the presence of mind to ask what, if anything, they've told their little girl. Turns out, they've told her nothing (seriously, what's a young child going to do with that information?), and they thought they were doing a good job of not discussing it in front of her. But when they put her to bed a couple nights ago, she asked what a biopsy was. When the mom told me this, I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Five years old. Jesus.

So please keep positive thoughts for Thursday. Based on the biopsy, he has the lowest grade possible of breast cancer, but the pathology report following surgery will really elucidate the prognosis. Breast cancer is so rare in men that we forget they can get it, too. Statistically speaking, it's unlikely that most of us will ever know an afflicted male. And seriously, these were odds I really didn't want to beat.

posted by LA @ 10:36 PM