Friends Who Met During Cancer Treatments Gather Once A Year To Celebrate Being Alive

Cancer is a battle that more of us face than ever before. To celebrate being alive, four friends who went through their cancer treatments together meet up once a year.

They say that trauma brings people together. For Sandy Robertson, Terri Naab, Shari Hamlin, and Priscilla Bauer, this was certainly true. They had all been given a pretty terrible diagnosis from their doctors, and ended up in cancer treatment together, not knowing if they would come out of the other side alive.

Radioactive Meetup: The four women met during their radiotherapy sessions in Methodist Hospital’s oncology ward. Sitting among the tubes and machines, they got chatting. It started off light, but would often drift into the existential. Facing mortality while battling cancer will do that to a person.

• “After the whole breast cancer diagnosis, I said, ‘What am I doing in sales? I need to write.’ And so I quit my sales job and started writing,” one of them recalled. Her chats with the other three women made her realise what she wanted from life, provided she survived.

Over the course of their cancer treatment, the four became solid friends.

Loved and Lost

However, it wasn’t all health and happiness for the four ladies. They lost one of their friends to cancer while they were receiving treatments. They still remember her now during their meetups at the shores of Lake Minnetonka at Maynard’s every year.

• “She was very young, she got married in September and died in March,” Bauer said to CBS. “We all went to the wedding. It was one of the most beautifully sad events that I have ever been to. She was so special to us.”

Now, they meet once a year, travelling across the country to check in and maintain their friendship. The four of them loved and lost together. Their fight against cancer was a hard one, but they came together through it, and now have solidified a relationship earned through struggle.

• “Even though it was tragic and horrible, it was one of the best times in my life because I met these people,” Terri Naab said.