This was illustrated for our reporter Neil Offen this week in a generous and frank interview with Cindy Atkins, who used to drive fire engines for a living.
Atkins is in a long war with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer that spread to her liver and spine.
But when she lost her hair to 10 months of chemotherapy, she worried that spending time choosing and fitting a wig was vanity.
Imagine, if you can, the kind of fight you have to be in when you worry that something so simple is a diversion of the attention that you need to beat the disease, or that a moment of self-care might make you seem unserious about cancer.
Atkins, who doesn't have to imagine, is exactly the right kind of person to be volunteering at Duke Hospital's Morris Cancer Clinic.
Offen described her as "buoyantly happy, despite, or perhaps because of, her experiences. ...
"I can see how people going in there who are distraught walk out of there smiling," he said.
As a been-there-done-that veteran, she -- along with the staff at the Butterfly Boutique wig shop -- is helping other women remember the small pleasures that give them heart while they are fighting for their lives.
For that, she gets this week's Durham Grit Award.
n What's the difference between a Pathfinders cancer patient and any other cancer patient?
That's what a study at the Duke Cancer Care Research Program would like to discover.
Pathfinders, based on seven "pillars" of recovery, pairs cancer patients with a trained social worker, family counselor or therapist who serves as a patient advocate or guide through the complexity of cancer care.
A Pathfinders advocate is akin to a doula or guardian ad litem, a sort of lantern-holding local guide to the strange landscape of cancer.
The Pathfinders program originated in Colorado but came Duke as part of an effort to quantify the effects of a program that is focused on helping patients recover their quality of life.
Here's the rub: The program's initial grant has run out. Director Lisa Staley said she wants to study the Pathfinders program's application to other long-term illnesses. This seems like a good reason to shake the couch cushions.
n Wake up and be counted should be Durham's rallying cry this year.
The Triangle, booming as it has been, could nab a new congressional district out of the 2010 U.S. Census, which aims to tally every living soul in America.
And let's not forget the bottom line, the one written in black ink: The census data plays a huge role in allocating $400 billion in federal funds.
This year, every household will get a form, which the Census Bureau says is one of the shortest in history and takes about 10 minutes.
But the big concern for the Triangle's figures isn't the hassle of filling out a questionnaire. With so much converted housing -- basement apartments, attic studios -- and such a transient population, there's strong potential that the census could miss a swath of residents. There's no better argument for local residents to not just fill out, but seek out, their forms.
