Not the OP, but have forgotten birthdays, and am a classic introvert. That's a bit of an extreme take to pivot to; birthdays happen every year and if you have

Not the OP, but have forgotten birthdays, and am a classic introvert. That's a bit of an extreme take to pivot to; birthdays happen every year and if you have more than 5+ people to remember, that's a lot of days to keep in the head. Quite frankly, there's a lot of people out there (including myself) that see birthday greetings as rather meaningless - or simply not one of their love languages. (It strikes me this whole thread shows the rather diametrically different love languages of people.) Why send a card that's going to be read and tossed, realistically? I'd much rather have a meandringly long coffee chat out of the blue once every few years. Conversely, cancer is life altering enough to the point you're far more likely to hear through the grapevine of social contacts even if it's an acquaintance, let alone a close friend. There's workplace social circles, family social circles... Then you can adjust to the level of proper severity and be on hand for food assistance, longer chats knowing time is short, and so on.