Odious comparisons

There's a woman at work who dislikes me. There may be others I don't know about, but I'm sure about her. And I don't blame her. She and I were treated for cancer at about the same time, and the path I took made her path more difficult. 

When I told my boss I had breast cancer, my boss told me to take off as much time as I needed and hired a sub to cover for me. The sub was redundant. I didn't take any time off. I clung to my place among living, healthy people. I didn't want to join the tribe of the sick. It wasn't easy showing up for work when I had drains hanging from my chest and a fluid-filled seroma swelling in my armpit and chemo nausea and an itchy wig that bore no resemblance to my own hair, but I could do it. It wasn't courage, however. It was cowardice. Being at work was being normal. Taking time off and being home alone with my thoughts would have been terrifying.

I got a lot of praise for my "great attitude" and "strong work ethic." I resented the former (would I have been to blame if I gave the—accurate—impression that I was bummed out?), but I took pride in the latter, even though it didn't reflect the source of my motivation (fear!).

Meanwhile, a colleague in another department who was battling a different kind of cancer took a leave and moved in with family members in a different city so that she could have their support while she underwent a particularly grueling form of chemo, which involved infusions directly into her abdomen. I kept in touch with her a bit over the six months or so that she was out of the office and got reports of how desperately ill she was.

Eventually, people started making comparisons between her handling of her disease and my handling of mine—even though we had completely different kinds of cancer in completely different organs with completely different treatments. I heard rumors that my colleague had been given a hint that she might lose her job if she didn't return to work soon. 

I know she must have had some awareness of the running commentary. And she must have seen me as the grownup equivalent of a grade-grubbing, ass-kissing classmate. She must have resented me for making her look bad. And the stakes were way higher than her getting a C to my A. My "strong work ethic" put her job at risk. So far we've both held on to our jobs, despite several rounds of layoffs, but I regret that with so much in common, we are not better friends, and that at a time when she was miserably ill, she had to suffer by comparison with me. 

A milder tension has developed between me and a good friend who was treated for breast cancer shortly after I finished treatment. Whereas I was able to get by with an occasional Tylenol or Advil after my various surgeries—the stronger stuff brought on constipation, more hateful to me than postsurgical discomfort—her pain was intense and still has not abated. Her doctors have pressured her to give up the opiates she feels she still needs. It's clear that once again I've set a "good patient" standard that causes grief to someone less fortunate.

"Comparisons are odious," wrote John Donne. True enough.