How much to whom

Last week I attended my best friend since we don't really know when's wedding. It was a beautiful, wonderful wedding! I also saw my classmates and friends from middle school, which was quite a nostalgic experience. All of them (except one friend who I told about my situation) asked me, "Did you just fly in from the United States for the wedding?" which I was planning on doing originally before I knew about lymphoma, but since that wasn't the case, I ended up saying, "I had some health concerns so I was actually in Japan for a little while. I'm hoping to go back to the States this summer, though." Then nobody questioned further about my 'health concerns', which was expected.

Additionally, I visited my old workplace few days ago. They were the people I wanted to see so badly, especially because I loved the people there and the place is physically so close from my home that I can see the building from my window. So thinking about visiting there gave me somewhat of strengths when I was suffering from side effects.

Nobody (again, except one close co-worker friend) knew that I was in Japan for the past few months, and I repeated the same sentence I gave out to the people at the wedding. However, I ended up telling the name of specific disease I have, and what happened in detail, to two ladies there. They both shared with me about the sickness they experienced first, so perhaps I felt comfortable to share because of that.

How much should you tell to whom?
The degree of comfort one feels about sharing personal information really depends on person, but when it comes to health concerns, it gave me headache that I don't know what to do.

Although Hodgkin's lymphoma is a relatively rare disease, I certainly hope that if anyone I meet ever come across similar sickness, or any disease at all, he/she finds out before it's too late. If I could increase the awareness about health in general through sharing my experience, I would be more than happy to share it all.
But before I was done with the treatments, I did not want sympathy or unnecessary anxiety from everyone I knew by telling them about lymphoma. It's because, again, the word "cancer" scares most people away. I never meant to draw a line in the pool of people I knew, to separate those to tell, and not to tell, but it happened subconsciously.

However, since I'm done with all the treatments, I can now be a living proof that I am well, that I feel more comfortable sharing further with everyone.

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Oh, and recently, I finally sorted out the medical bills from UW...the medical cost was astonishingly high compared to the ones in Japan, which reminded me of the hotel-like service at UW Medical Center, and the youth hostel-like service at Tsukuba University Hospital. I will discuss about it further in the next post.