My friend Ginger

I have a friend named Ginger. We met eight years ago when I was interviewing for the women's services director position. It was a group interview and Ginger was in the group. How you can make a connection with someone in a group interview I do not know but Ginger and I did and have been close friends ever since. 

Part of the connection may be the warped sense of humor Ginger has. This is a woman who dressed up like a breast for Halloween. Kind of sick and wrong but very funny. (This poor baby is probably scarred for life and doesn't even know why!) Ginger does a lot of breast feeding education and she has a bit of an obsession with breast. During National breastfeeding month she makes breast cookies and cakes. I opened the door to my office one morning with a lady from corporate standing behind me only to find my wall plastered with xerox copies of breast. Ginger had gotten security (my nephew Peter) to open the door to my office over the weekend and Ginger got a couple of other nurses to drag the copy machine in my office, lay their naked chest on top of it and push the copy button. These were not even particularly young and perky breast but saggy middle aged ones. It would have been funny if corporate hadn't been on my heels. It was a little terrifying, I slammed the door and turned around saying I had forgotten something. The corporate lady didn't say anything! I think it was beyond her comprehension. That was only one of numerous jokes she played on me. I had to threaten Peter with his job if he opened my office for her again.

Ginger is an amazing person. She has seven kids and suffered from severe post partum depression. So severe that in reality it was probably post partum psychosis. It was so severe that she ended up in the state mental hospital and received electric shock therapy. She was able to get her life back together and is one of the leading resources in the state for post partum depression. She has presented lectures, run a support group and written on the subject. She has helped countless women.



 Ginger has been a bit of a miracle. She was diagnosed with stage three melanoma over ten years ago and has been in remission. During the summer she found some new tumors and has had two surgeries and been on some new experimental treatments. Ginger had a CT and PET scan last week but didn't get the results because she wanted to wait until after her daughters wedding on Saturday. Monday evening Ginger sent me a text saying that she had gotten the results and her melanoma was stage 4 and was all through her neck and in her mediastinum. When I called she was really hard to understand because she was crying and not making a lot of sense. In September I went to a doctors appointment with her and at that point asked her what she wanted my roll to be, the optimist, pessimist or realist and she said emphatically optimist! OK, that's what I will be.

I went over to her house after work and spent some time with her. She was making much more sense. She said she is going to start the IPI trial and asked her if I knew anything about it. I told her I did. It's really hard to be optimistic. That is the trial that Darci was on and it made her sick and didn't do anything to help her. Ginger has not asked how Darci is and I have not told her because I know she doesn't want to hear that she died and I don't want to tell her. I am really having a hard time feeling any optimism even though I'm being the optimistic friend. I told Ginger she is already an anomaly because she has been in remission for so long and therefore none of the statistics apply to her. Mean time she is feeling tightness in her throat and is short of breath. I really hate this disease, it is relentless.

I am not writing this as a eulogy but rather as a tribute to my friend who is once again fighting for her life.