Being the parent of a son diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma when he was 21, I can speak from my experience only. It took almost a year for the cancer to show itself, so along the way we had been to see many other doctors, but not cancer related. On our first few visits to an oncology dept in a large teaching hospital all I kept thinking was, "we are not like them, we are not here for what they are here for, we do not want to belong to this club, we don't want these people to speak to us, to know us". Finally after being diagnosed when the fear left and the hope and trust took over, that same facility became our "safety net", our place to be ourselves, to hug, laugh and cry with other cancer patients and health care professionals on all levels and I mean from the parking attendants to the doctors. It is a forever changing experience.