The warnings came immediately, fast and often: Beware the cancer ghosts. I was 35 and had just been diagnosed with breast cancer . The phrase felt morbid, conjuring an image of someone who had died from the disease lingering in the shadows of my hospital room, haunting me with guilt for surviving.

“When I had cancer, my best friend stopped speaking to me ,” a woman told me. “I haven’t heard from her since.”

“I had a friend who was so involved during my treatment, she even threw me a surprise party to celebrate my last infusion. But the minute my hair started growing back, she was gone forever . Poof! ” another said.

I was warned that after cancer, I might find myself with a different community than the one I had before; that, through the experience, I would find out who my

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