What Friends Are For

I thought my health woes were going to ruin our long-awaited reunion

- By MARY BOLDT, York, Pennsylvania

I lay on the exam table in my surgeon's office on that snowy March morning five years ago, eager to get the appointment over with. It was just a routine followup to the mastectomy I'd had the month before, and everything had been going smoothly. My mind was on other things, better things. Namely, the long-awaited visit from my dear friends Chris, Gina and Susie. I needed to finish cleaning before they arrived in a couple hours to spend three days at my house in York, Pennsylvania. We'd been planning our get-together in a constant flurry of emails, phone calls and Facebook messages ever since my breast cancer diagnosis in the fall.

Gina was flying in from Rhode Island, Susie from Texas, and Chris was driving up from Virginia. The timing of their visit seemed perfect. I was recovering well not only from the mastectomy but also from the first grueling cycles of chemotherapy. We would revel in each other's company before I started radiation and my next cycles of chemo. We'd been friends for decades, but the last time the four of us had been together in one place had been at Gina's wedding 31 years earlier. It had been too long!

I knew their loving, warm personalities would be a much-needed balm not just for me but for our whole household. My husband, Karl, and our teenage twins, Collin and Ellen. I also lived with my mother, who was on home hospice in the advanced stages of a long illness. Mom would enjoy seeing Gina, Chris and Susie—she'd known Gina and Chris since they were teenagers—even though, because of her dementia, she likely wouldn't remember all the good times they'd shared with her over the years.

Dr. Kenna was saying something. I focused my attention on her. “The best thing would be for you to be admitted right away.”

“Admitted where?” I asked.

“To the hospital,” she said.

I couldn’t process what she was saying. “Why would I need to go to the hospital?”

“You may have an infection setting in,” she said.