Everything Changes - The Guide to Young Adult Cancer

Most people are psyched to play match maker between cancer patients, thinking if they know someone else with your kind of cancer, of course you’ll hit it off and become friends.  This is when phone numbers are given and the match making begins.

In Everything Changes, I wrote: “In my first six months of living with cancer, I received enough phone numbers of friends of friends with cancer to fill a small Rolodex. Picking up the phone and calling a complete stranger, twice my age, with cancer was just as appealing to me as calling the nice, single Jewish boy whose mother had met my mother at synagogue. It wasn’t going to happen.”

Sure, now I love talking to strangers about cancer, but I waited to do it when the time was right for me, and with patients whose values interested me.  Just because two people have cancer does not mean they have compatible values around medicine, treatment, or emotional styles and religious ways of coping.  Plus, I want to feel connected to the person about something other than cancer: I’ve met plenty of cancer patients who are just as crazy or unappealing as anyone else in the general public.  It’s all very much like internet dating.

I like Imerman Angels, an organization that matches “fighters” with “survivors”. They’re great yentas, taking into account things like if you’re a college student, parent, young adult, and the stage of your disease.  And, it can be nice to find someone to talk to because you want to, not because your very well meaning neighbor thinks you need it.

I love it when my phone number is given out to newly diagnosed patients.  I hope they will call, but I never expect them to.  I totally get that most people aren’t into the dial-a-stranger routine.

Did people try to do cancer match making with you? How did it go?  Do you like having direct contact with other patients or prefer more anonymous  communication, like reading blogs? What’s match making like if you have a rare form of cancer?

Check out Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s to learn more about my cancer conversations with complete strangers.