There’s a woman at my office undergoing chemotherapy. This is her second round of cancer and treatment - and she has told me that she wants nothing more than for us to treat her as if she doesn’t have cancer.

Which we do. Some of us to a fault.

One woman in the office took our cancer patient to lunch. I didn’t attend but when they returned I could tell that something was amiss. Our cancer patient sat herself at my cube and ranted about her lunch date. “All she would talk about is how miserable her life is. And all I could think was, ‘at least you don’t have cancer. Twice.’”

I wonder how I’m supposed to treat her as if things aren’t what they are, yet be mindful of the fact that things are definitely what they are. I write this in the present tense because it has haunted me since she said it almost a week ago. This whole situation is an interpersonal easy bake oven and the only thing I can make with it is a land mine pie.

At the time she was wearing a red scarf on her head and some over the knee boots with studs on the cuffs. That was, and still is, pirate. Especially if we were treating her as if the cancer didn’t exist.

“AAARRRRGGGH!” I said to her. And she laughed.

And then I bet she went to go tell someone else what an asshole I am.