Let me tell you about my friend Christian: Day 26

Two blogs in less than twenty-four hours! Whoa! As part of Lung Cancer Awareness Month (brought to you by November) I am going to share a little about someone who is very special to me.

I met Christian Nataline five years ago—we were guests of our mutual oncologist Dr. Shaw at a function where she was being honored. I was struck by how young Chris looked and learned that he’d been diagnosed just after turning thirty-one. He’d been married less than a year (to his amazing wife Karen) and was the father of an eight month old. Like me, he was also a mutant—ALK+ and stage IV.

As it would turn out, Christian and I often had appointments in the cancer center at MGH on the same day and our relationship started to grow. As many of you know, there are certain things about this journey that can’t be understood by anyone other than a person who is walking the same path. Like me, Christian has had a wide variety of treatments (which is another way of saying the response/progression cycle). He started out with … read more on Linnea Olson’s blog “life and breath: outliving lung cancer “