class - Regis College

just
another
12
A Cancer Diagnosis Brings
Regis Friends Back Together
bad
REGIS TODAY
Back in the ’80s, long before ionic hair straighteners
and keratin treatments, girls like Mary and
me, girls with thick and unruly hair, resorted to
hair
homespun methods to tame our wild locks. Mary’s
tool of choice was a knit ski cap and she wore it
with aplomb in Angela Hall, pulled tightly over her
wavy mane no matter the season.
Mary Pacilio Haggerty ’84 and I talked on the
phone last year, laughing about our love-hate
relationship with our hair while commiserating
about chemotherapy and baldness. It was another
day
21st-century innovation that prompted the phone
call and drew me back into our once-tight Regis
circle. Like a lot of college classmates, Mary and I
stayed in touch via Facebook. We kept tabs on one
another’s lives through sporadic online photos and
comments, applauding family achievements, vacation
plans, and, yes, great hairstyles.
So when I read Mary’s Facebook post: “Resting comfortably to Regis white noise,”
invited?” I soon learned there was no party or slight. Mary had been diagnosed with
breast cancer and a group of Regis friends were gathered at her cozy Connecticut
home to offer support, chattering companionably while she dozed on the couch.
Mary’s cancer diagnosis hit home for me. A 13-year non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor,
I remembered those pre-treatment days vividly: the shell-shocked feeling of disbelief
and helplessness and that awful waiting and worrying. And I knew that while
modern medicine, with its arsenal of drugs and survivor statistics, offered assurance
that life would return to normal, it was girls like me who proved it.
BY PATRICIA MURRAY DIBONA ’84