Many people had „warned“ me that there would be a lot of talk about cancer, and a lot of fellow patients who define themselves via their sickness. All things considered, I have not yet found that to be the case. In fact, people seem to strike a balance which is just right.

The one thing everybody here has in common is a recent cancer diagnosis (for some not so recent, and in the meantime, they have been through gruelling rounds of various treatments and therapies and lived with the uncertainty and/or the fear of recurrence, for a long time), and now we are all here for a break, to get away from it all, and to regain mobility and mental and physical strength to go back and get on with our lives.

Despite the fact that cancer affects about one in three or four of us all, so that it actually should not come as such a shock, this diagnosis is crushing, even life-changing, and only others with that experience can understand the enormity. If the subject comes up from time to time in a facility such as this one, in between talking about every other subject under the sun, I find that a normal step in the process of healing and moving on, and quite therapeutic.

Changing the subject, I caught this stork basking past my balcony in the late-afternoon sunlight: