The most important question you need to address after a cancer diagnosis is: Who can I call at 3 a.m. when I'm having a panic attack? Yes, I know your friends volunteered their services. "Call me anytime, anytime at all!" they said. Then you dial them and get a grumpy: "I'm sleeping!" And they'll claim you called them just an hour ago, which is such a lie.

You try Mom, who will surely soothe you just like when you were little and had a nightmare. Instead, Mom puts on a phony foreign accent and pretends you have the wrong number.

As you can see, a cancer diagnosis is difficult from a purely telephonic point of view. Panic doesn't observe polite business hours. Instead, it creeps up at night and grabs you by the hair. (Oh, wait, you don't have any hair.…Well, perhaps it can latch on to your hot-flash-drenched nightgown.)

Lucky for you, Cancer Girl knows exactly how to solve this problem. What you need is a whole new set of friends who live in different time zones: Jen in London. George in Ukraine. Australia is tricky, because when it's dawn here, it's next week in Sydney, and the people there have already moved on with their lives. How do you get these new friends, you ask?

First, make room in your life by getting rid of the old ones. If they're all in your time zone, they're no use at all. Anyway, if they really cared about you, they'd move to a part of the world that's difficult to cover on your phone tree, like Antarctica.

Now it's time to make new friends in other time zones. Do you live near a foreign consulate? No? Try random-dialing within a particular country code and keep whoever picks up trapped in conversation. They may not feel the warm glow of friendship right away, but believe me, they'll come around after you dial them again and again ("by mistake!") in the ensuing weeks.

Friendship is a two-way street, of course, so if you want Yuki in Japan to treat you like the center of the universe whenever you call and need to unload, you'll have to learn rudimentary Japanese. Saying "sushi yummy!" doesn't count. Until you're up to speed in this new tongue, try to hog the conversation so they can't indicate they don't understand.

From New York, I can call my aunt in Ohio when low-level panic kicks in. With more panic, I reach out to Dorrie in L.A. For Code Red, I need one of my instant new best friends in Europe. Voilà, time to say bonjour to Pascal in Paris!

Pascal answers in her typical warm way, with, "Ah, merde!" That's when I know we're ready to settle in for a nice, long chat.

Jami Bernard is the author of Breast Cancer: There & Back and The Incredible Shrinking Critic: 75 Pounds & Counting.