It's been a startlingly realistic week in the Triple A's. A woman I sponsor has found that she may have cancer but probably not. Another has found out that she probably doesn't, but may. I also sponsor a guy who is a cancer survivor but has some side effects that, some days, confine him to less than five feet from his bathroom door. Today at a morning meeting I talked to a woman who, the last time I saw her, months ago, was a fine figure of an Irish lass with dense natural copper hair and full-breasted enough to raise most eyebrows most places she went. Freckles all over too. This morning she popped in to talk, looking pale, strained and thin, totally flat-chested as far as I could see and wearing a yellow bandanna on her head in place of the Irish hair. There was a guy with breast cancer too.
Life doesn't stop just because we don't drink anymore. What stops is having to drink. Period. We still need the support of others for the rest of the adventure. On the floor today it was mostly discussed how to get through the feelings and the fear that accompany such terrible diagnoses. People have left the actual doctoring to the doctors, but they share the knowledge above price about how to make it through the smelly swamp one day at a time with a reasonable amount of peace of mind.
I told 'my' two women that they needed to talk to those other people right now more than they needed to talk to me. They are. I don't do doctor, and I haven't been there.
The rooms are full of Expert Witnesses on all kinds of subjects depending on where the adventure of life has led them. You name it, it comes up in the conversation.
This is why, when my Mom says "You've been sober for a zillion years, do you still have to go to those meetings?", I say, "Yes, frequently, because I want to keep rubbing shoulders with the people I want to be like." Ta!
