In 2020, Annabelle Gurwitch went to urgent care for a routine COVID test. The doctor suggested she get an X-ray, and on her way home, he called her to say she had a concerning mass in her lungs.
A few months later, Gurwitch learned she had stage 4 lung cancer. It was incurable, but there was a treatment that could extend her life. Every three months, she had to go in for a scan to find out whether that treatment was still working.
"There's so much riding on this information," Gurwitch said. "I would just worry, and my brain would go in circles, and then I'd have worry in the days waiting for the scan results."
She knew she needed help from someone who understood. She found a support community called Imerman's Angels, a nonprofit that matches people with cancer to "angels" — trained volunteer mentors who have the same diagnosis.
Gurwitch was connected with a woman in her seventies named Hardye Moel.
"And from that first phone call, I started to feel like I could see a way to start re-entering life," Gurwitch said. "She would laugh with me. She laughed at my bad cancer jokes. She would keep me company on these drives to go to the scans."
One day, on one of her hour-long drives to get scanned, Gurwitch told Moel she had met someone who seemed interested in going on a date.
"But I couldn't imagine that I should go on a date with someone. Who was I to go on a date with someone?" Gurwitch recalled. "This was not a time to start a relationship. What kind of future was it?"
Then Moel said something Gurwitch never expected to hear.
"Hardye said to me, 'You know, Annabelle, you could be in it just for the sex,'" Gurwitch recalled with a laugh.
"And I could not believe that my septuagenarian angel was suggesting that. It was so shocking that I took her advice."
Gurwitch went on a date, and then another date, and then another. And soon, the pair were in a relationship. Four years later, they're still together.
"I would never have done that," Gurwitch said.
"And the thing is, I know that she wasn't just talking about sex. What she was telling me was to not be so invested in the future — to not be so stuck in outcomes."
Gurwitch went on to write a book about her cancer diagnosis and all the people who helped her along the way, including Moel. It's called The End of My Life is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker. The memoir came out earlier this year.
Hardye Moel died in 2023. Only later did Gurwitch learn that Moel had been mentoring 13 other people at the same time.
"And when I think about Hardye doing that, I think, 'My gosh, what a capacity for generosity,'" Gurwitch said. "I thought I was the only one."
Gurwitch now acts as a cancer mentor herself, in honor of Moel. She says she still thinks about her every day.
"She encouraged me to start re-engaging in life, one step at a time," Gurwitch said. "And that's exactly what I'm doing."
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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