I nodded eagerly. Melissa was someone I would have hung out with before my diagnosis, and I was thrilled to have made a new friend who was also trying to find ways to creatively engage with illness. We were both forging unlikely careers: Melissa painted self-portraits from bed; I wrote self-portraits from bed. Watercolors and words were the drugs we preferred for our pain. We were learning that sometimes the only way to endure suffering is to transform it into art.
