let me tell you about my friend robin

i have this amazing friend named robin. i met her through our mutual, badass friend, kelly. robin is one of the most wonderful, special people i have ever met in my life. i constantly feel lucky that we made our way into each other's lives. she is kind, giving, hilarious and absolutely beautiful (with gorgeous loooong hair!). needless to say, she is a very important person in my life. sometimes we go weeks or months without seeing each other but we're always in contact in some way or another and we can catch up without skipping a beat.

a little less than 2 months ago robin was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. she's had a knot on the back of her neck for a few years now and each time she saw a doctor about it, they told her it was stress/tension and prescribed muscle relaxers. well, she finally saw a doctor who was concerned by this knot, now almost the size of a pear, and he ordered imaging tests. it turns out that the "knot" is actually a tumor, a sarcoma. more imaging revealed that it has metastasized down her spine and into her lungs. i was dumbstruck when i learned this news. it's been hard for me, and all of us, to think about but we have to address it because this is happening. this is not pretend.

her family lives in lubbock and they have been in and out of austin and houston since the day robin got the news. she was able to get appointments with a great team of doctors at md anderson, which is probably the place to be if you have cancer. she went through several weeks of tests and then found out that she needed to be in houston for 3 weeks to do chemo. her mom and older sister were with her for the first week, which was rough to say the least. after the week was over she was cleared to come home for a couple of days! she has moved back to lubbock to continue the rest of the treatment but i was lucky enough to see her on saturday night. i hadn't seen her in several weeks so part of the time was just spent catching up, but the other part was spent crying. i'm not going to lie, i am worried. and i am sad. i am sad that i can't be there for robin while she's going through this. i know she's not alone, she has the greatest family on the planet taking care of her, but i'm still bummed that i'm so far away and that there's nothing i can do for her.

last february, the night before i had a bone marrow aspiration, several of us went out to dinner at hickory street. a man drew a picture of all of us sitting around our table. when he came up to show it to us, we all dismissed him pretty quickly because we thought he wanted us to buy it from him. he gave it to us and everyone agreed that i should have the picture because i "needed" it the most. as you all know, my bone marrow aspiration came back clear! on saturday, before i went to see robin, i knew that that picture now belonged to her. she started crying as soon as she saw it which, of course, made me cry. hopefully it works its magic on her :)