I have a 10-year-old daughter, which means I’ve seen the Disney Channel movie High School Musical many, many times. I’m not sure how many times; I’ll just say I’ve seen it more times than any mentally healthy person really should.

If you don’t have a 10-year-old living in your house, I’ll sum up the plot: The movie is about a group of high school students who are all in a musical.

At the very end of the movie, they decide they’ve all become friends via said musical, and they perform an extravagant song-and-dance number in the school gym called, “We’re All in This Together.”

Sample lyrics:

We’re all in this together
Once we know
That we are
We’re all stars
And we see that!

The lyrics don’t make tons of sense, I admit, but the song is dang catchy, and it was running through my head the last time I visited the cancer center.

Cancer patients aren’t nearly as perky as the stars of High School Musical, thank goodness, but we do all have a bond, one giant thing in common. And we all seem fairly upbeat about it when we’re all together.

When I was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma, I had a lot of misconceptions about what life as a cancer patient was like.

I thought everyone would stare at me when I walked into the cancer center waiting room, wondering what horrible disease I had. I thought the receptionist would take my name, wide-eyed and shaking. I thought the person next to me would turn to me and say, “So, what’re you in for?” I would have to explain, and of course they’d be shocked.

After nearly 10 years of visiting the cancer center waiting room, nobody has ever asked me that. And I’ve never asked anyone else.

We all seem to know: If you’re in this waiting room, you’re one of us. We don’t need to ask each other any more questions about our diseases. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s compare our e-readers, or just hang out quietly. It’s OK.

I also thought the nurse would glance at my chart and immediately freak out at the notion of my horrible disease. She’d scream, “YOU HAVE WHAT???” She’d then throw the chart in the air, run down the hallway, and leap out the window, like the Cowardly Lion running from the Wizard’s throne room in The Wizard of Oz.

Nope, that’s never happened, either. The nurses are all completely cool with my uncool disease. I’m treated like I’m there for any other routine checkup.

Last, I thought that the cancer center waiting room would be a dreary, dark place filled with somber, crying people.

It turns out that the cancer center waiting room is, well, normal.

It’s not sad. It’s not dreary. It’s bright, and there’s usually upbeat ‘80s music playing in the background.

In fact, it’s almost relaxing, because it’s the one place I know I’m not “the gal with the weird disease.” Everybody in the room has a weird disease. We don’t look at each other funny, because we’re all in this together.

As I sat in the waiting room the other day, I witnessed an animated conversation between an 80-ish man and a teenage boy, who was the grandson of one of the other patients. They talked for probably 20 minutes about books they liked, about Star Trek and Star Wars.

While I disagreed with the teenage boy (Episode One was not a good movie, son; it just wasn’t), I wondered if this kind of conversation would happen anywhere else. When would two such different-seeming people be drawn together to sit and talk and discover they had so much in common?

We’re not going to get up and dance, but I think cancer patients all get it. We’re all in this together. I’ll change a few words from High School Musical, and we’ll have our own new chant:

Cancer patients everywhere
Wave your hands up in the air
That’s the way we do it
Let’s get to it
Come on, everyone!

Are you all with me? Or do I need to stop watching the Disney Channel?