That was my suggestion for a headline for this op-ed (i.e., a signed opinion piece), which ran in today’s Boston Globe. I wrote it over a month ago, and I’m happy to say the good news still holds true – and the book mentioned at the end of the piece (in my “signer”) is now on sale! Anyway, the original piece is behind a paywall. I believe in supporting journalism (and, yes, if you aren’t paying to read a piece, you are not supporting The Boston Globe). That said, I feel this is an important piece and I want more people to read it so. Consider subscribing to your local paper! Consider buying books from the authors you love (hopefully me!). And, for now, read on:

OPINION

Here’s to life: A cancer patient’s plea for real conversation

Ask about my health if you’re curious. But then, please, move on. Tell me about your cat’s recent vet visit. The annoying person in your book club. A show you just know I’ll want tickets for.

What do you say to a cancer patient? This is a trick question. The answer is “anything.”

That doesn’t mean it isn’t a question worth asking. Since I was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer in May 2023, I’ve noticed a distinct change in how people behave toward me. In general, and certainly among my close connections, people have been great.

I’ve received a mantelpiece full of lovely cards and flowers. Classmates ferried me and my husband to a college reunion picnic, which fell during my first chemotherapy treatment, and shepherded other classmates to our table. Other friends brought over food and baked goods (so many and so continuously, in fact, that I had to ask for a moratorium: We were both gaining too much weight!).

I’m an outlier in many ways. Surgery successfully removed the original tumor, and my remaining metastasizes are either stable or shrinking, depending on which radiologist does my bimonthly CT scan. My CEA number, a cancer indicator, has been in the normal range for over a year now. I am truly, as my medical team likes to stress, living with this disease. Not suffering from it.

I’m far from alone. Even as diagnoses rise, the number of people living with cancer is growing. Three decades ago, survivorship was relatively rare, and cancer survivors made up fewer than 1.5 percent of the population, according to the American Association of Cancer Research. Now they make up 5 percent. That’s 18 million Americans living with a cancer diagnosis in their past.

But as my biweekly treatment — “maintenance chemo” — goes deep into its second year, I’m noticing something else. I have, in some ways, become invisible. In part, that may be because I look very different than I did less than two years ago. My hair fell out, and my current boyish white mop is a striking departure from even my most recent author photo.

But I think it’s more than that. People feel awkward around any illness. Cancer, with its outdated reputation as a death sentence, is a real conversation killer. People say, “I’m sorry.” Often they ask if there’s anything they can do. Then they fall silent.

I understand. Cancer is scary, even secondhand. I’ve certainly had my down days. During one of them, one of the most useful and kind things a friend said to me (and which I keep as a mantra) was quite simple: “You may not have hope right now,” he told me. “That does not mean there is no hope.”

I’ve also borrowed the personal affirmation of former NBA player Tom Meschery, who was profiled in The Athletic, discussing life after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and told he had five years to live:

“I have a little mantra I say to myself: Tom, you are not going to die tomorrow. And Tom, you are not going to die in the next week. And probably not for the next six months. More likely, not for another year. So f— it, get on with your life.”

That attitude has allowed me to draft yet another book manuscript, cover countless assignments for my various freelance bosses, travel, attend parties and dinners and concerts — and even dance, albeit maybe less energetically than once before. In short, to live.

And while I appreciate the “I’m sorry” response I often get when I break the news (or my hair or chemo pump do it for me), and even more so the sincere “How are you doing?” that lets me vent about one annoying side effect or another, what I really want is just that — to live.

Because the bottom line is I am still alive and I want to be included in your life and include you in mine. So, please, ask about my health if you’re curious. Share those stories, like the one about Tom Meschery. But then, please, move on. Tell me about your cat’s recent vet visit. The annoying person in your book club. A show you just know I’ll want tickets for — because I’m planning on being here as long as possible, and I do not want to waste more of it on my illness than necessary.

How lovely it was to go to a party a few weeks ago, me, my cancer, and all, and talk about books, obedience training, musicians playing state fairs. In short: anything and everything else that makes up life.

Clea Simon is a Somerville-based author. Her most recent novel is “Bad Boy Beat.”