My friend and I met through the National Association of Women Business Owners, where we both served on the same committee. Despite a 20-year age difference, we quickly became best pals. Both of us had similar family dynamics and the same quirky sense of humor. We had even started our companies the same year.
For more than 15 years, if one of us had a business question or needed a recommendation, we’d ring the other for advice. Like on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”—we were each other’s “phone a friend.”
I will never forget that phone call from her as she was leaving her doctor’s office. My friend had been sick and in pain on and off for a summer. She had hit rock bottom and insisted on more tests from her doctor. Turns out, he originally misdiagnosed her. She actually had an aggressive cancer.
As in business, when you are faced with a challenge, you can crumble or say “game on.” My friend was in shock, and I wanted to help her. She had so many friends and relatives who were ready to step in, but it just made more sense if one person went to the doctor appointments and chemotherapy sessions with her.
I was that person.
Blood Counts and Secret Decoder Rings
Being a business owner might be the perfect qualification for dealing with a serious illness. Most major projects require a team of people, and cancer is no exception. You also have to set goals and manage deadlines. With doctor appointments, blood work, chemo and dialysis, this makes for quite a project, and there is not a handbook. Entrepreneurism skills helped us forge ahead.
I bought us a journal and titled it “Thelma and Louise Go to Chemo”—a little like the journal that I use to take notes during all my client meetings. That journal became invaluable. It helped us keep track of medications, symptoms and the deluge of information that comes during a cancer treatment.
And we did what all good entrepreneurs do: we reached out to our network. Luckily, two friends—one who’s an oncologist, another who is in oncology pharmaceutical sales—offered their expertise. Both were happy to share their “secret decoder rings” when we had no clue what terminology and blood count results meant. My pharmaceutical friend even went so far as to meet us at chemo appointments and go to particularly important doctor appointments.
My friend and I were both active in the business community, and we knew some of the most successful—and busiest—women entrepreneurs in town. When they learned my friend was sick, a switch was flipped. All of a sudden, “Get Well” cards started coming, and more than a few had gift cards to local grocery stores inside. Meals were organized. The generosity of all these people is an incredible statement about entrepreneurs in Kansas City.
And thankfully, my friend had an incredible office manager. The business was still running, but now it ran in a different sort of way. She and I would meet in the hospital lobby to exchange papers to be signed. I could get on her work computer and help with bank reconciliations and answer other generic office questions when my friend was too sick to field questions since I had an idea of what she would have wanted to do.
‘Would Not Trade One Day’
I believe God—or the universe or whatever you prefer to call it—had a big hand in letting me be there for my friend. At the time, I owned an 8,000-square-foot warehouse and, tired of the maintenance costs and uncooperative tenants, I had decided to sell. I found a buyer at the same time my friend found out about her cancer. My employees became telecommuters, and I ran my business from my home—or whatever waiting room or doctor’s office we happened to be in that day.
One of my business mentors told me “there is a life expectancy to everything.” These words of wisdom have helped me gain perspective and peace many times.
After a year of being ill, my dear friend and business buddy decided it was just too much. She fought like a warrior and was such a role model for grace under fire, but she knew it was time to give her body a rest after so many physical setbacks. I respect and admire her courage and would not trade one day I was able to spend with her.
