A Conference of Our Own

A Conference of Our Own ( headline: Instructions for the Survivors)

by Annis Karpenko

Published August 30, 1999, The National Post

While the World Conference on Breast Cancer was being staged in Ottawa last month, four of my friends and I met in Toronto to have a mini-conference of our own. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon; summer was coming to an end and the leaves, starting their colour change in earnest, fluttered about in a light warm breeze. All of us are breast cancer survivors and our friend Karen had inadvertently orchestrated this impromptu Conference on Breast Cancer Reality by doing what many young breast cancer patients do, dying.

Before her passing, Karen had dictated that there be joyous music and hopeful prayer at our conference. Even though we were in a church, she wanted a celebration not a funeral. There would be no talk of fire and brimstone or statistics and medical madness only talk of a life fully lived in a short amount of time. There would be reminiscences of holidays, antics, laughter, tears, peace and pain with friends and family all joined together to remember Karen’s ready smile, gorgeous hazel eyes and quick wit. Karen reminded us all she was a wife, a daughter, a sister, a teacher and a friend who knew the odds and faced them with grace and elegance. She did not want to be considered a grim statistic; first and foremost, she was a woman.

We met Karen in the spring of 1996 at an eight-week training course that would enable us seasoned breast cancer veterans to counsel other women newly diagnosed or touched by the disease. As curious and empowered patients, we had all learned a great deal about our own cancers during diagnosis and treatments, but during the training sessions, it became evident that there was much we did not know, like the statistics of recurrence and the inability to predict it. We all agreed that much of the information we received during our volunteer training, we would have preferred not knowing. We left those Saturday sessions, tired and spent, fearful of facts and exhausted by emotions that are so often left out of clinical breast cancer discussion but we were also empowered to help other women in the ways that we were not helped during our own crises. We would be there to listen to someone else’s fears. We learned, but dared not speak of, the first truth. While most of us would go on to live long, healthy lives, some of us wouldn’t and it was impossible to tell then who might be first.

Karen was the first of our group to go. As we gathered outside the church after her service, it was so apparent to each of us that if fate had dealt a different hand, this could be one of our funerals and Karen would be standing here on the cement sidewalk saying goodbye to us. This was our reality and we were grateful to be here and alive, together in a place we all knew Karen loved and hated to leave. And we all knew the second truth about breast cancer and all cancers. That while there have been myriad studies and new drugs reported in the press almost daily, the basic treatments for the disease have remained the same for over a quarter century. My four friends and I agreed that the best treatments we’d experienced for our own breast cancers, were of course laughter, and in equal measure, chocolate.

After our personal conference ended, I took the subway home that afternoon and stood on the platform waiting for the bus to come. I could have taken a taxi to my home and arrived there much sooner, but as I stood there watching the leaves blow on the trees, hearing the clang of streetcars and traffic, the voices around me, I knew that it was good and right just to stand and wait, because I could.