Tag: death

Pitfalls of Residing in Cancerland

There have been a few pieces of bad news that have crossed my line of vision lately: recurrences and death. I wrote this a few months ago about the pains of remaining in Cancerland, where the likelihood of exposing oneself to such pain is much higher.

Hamster Wheel

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Cancer Curmudgeon

I think a lot about the risks and statistics regarding cancer. I think a lot about past post topics, like how folks in the kingdom of the well just want people who have/had cancer to move on already, just “get over” all the cancer. I don’t think about these things on purpose, they just pop up, unwanted. This post is about how these seemingly unrelated ideas mesh.

For those of us lucky enough to be former cancer patients, as in NOT Stage 4, our lives become about reducing risk of recurrence—diet, exercise, eliminating bad habits, taking up yoga/meditation/acupuncture (if you can afford the organic foods and things like acupuncture). Do all these right things and maybe cancer won’t come back. Then again, maybe it will.

What no one ever seems to mention (at least as far as I can tell) is another percentage or increased risk. The more former/current cancer patients in my social circle (in addition to or in place of those untouched by cancer? I don’t know) the more chances are I will hear bad news more often.  It is just the way the odds are.

Sometimes with the various blogs I read or the few folks I interact with on the interwebs, plus those IRL, it means I hear more bad news than average, meaning more sadness.

Make no mistake, my sadness is NOTHING compared to what is felt by those whose news I’m hearing.

All I’m referring to here is the fact that by hanging out in Cancerland even while I have no evidence of disease, I am still wallowing in cancer, quite the opposite of “getting over cancer” which so many of those untouched by cancer wish I would do: “get over cancer”—snort of derision.

Being in Cancerland is like getting on a hamster wheel I cannot seem to escape. Every time I turn around, someone else is getting bad news, because that is the increased risk that comes with knowing cancer patients. Maybe in 7 years I can exit the wheel—after I get through my next 2 years of bi-annual onco visits, after the following 5 of annual visits, and hopefully after that I never see him or another oncologist again. And after I stop interacting online with other cancer patients. But right now I run on that wheel like a furry critter, chased by cancer, Cancer, CANCER. Whereas before October 2010, cancer was hardly a blip in my consciousness.

I don’t know what to make of my increased risk of hearing bad news, either for myself or for others. In a conversation with Tumblr buddy Greg, he pointed out we have to celebrate the rare bits of good news, because they are indeed so rare in Cancerland. Most of the news for me has been good, but I find myself thinking often of those who keep getting hit with the bad news.

I’ve often pointed out on my blog that I am not sentimental, that I do sarcasm far better than true emotion. It is difficult for me to express words of encouragement or support or any of the other things those in pain need to hear. I think I never come off sincere, even when I am at my most sincere. So I tend not comment to others these messages, because I find words so inadequate at those most awful times. But I am heartbroken for all the sadness I hear about, I want the reason for the sadness to just STOP already. It really is that simple.

So to those reading who are Stage 4, and/or who’ve had recurrence, take this post as my message of support.

And I’m not stepping off the wheel today. I’ll keep my risk for increased chance of sadness high for now.

 

The D Word

A/N I started this post a week or two ago, but thought it would be taken as offensive. But I read a couple of things since, including Nancy’s Point and some horrible comments on Huffington Post that have renewed my desire to speak out to explain why, for me, sugarcoating death is so repugnant. Please click the link and read Nancy’s post, as well as the other post she links by Dr. Wosnick. Those are much nicer, more eloquent thoughts than the ones I express here. What I’ve written here still is a bit offensive, I even offend myself with it, but I think the topic is worth discussing.

The d-word….

No I do not mean dirty words like the f-word or the b-word (you know I have no problem just putting those actual words in here). But I meant death/dead/die.

It is strange that we avoid saying dead or died, yet, at least here in this rural area in which I live, some mourn quite publicly for a long time, perhaps morbidly so. On any given day I drive down a road and see at least one car with one of those “In loving memory” stickers, complete with date of birth and date of death. Or I see those tiny imitation grave sites that develop at the site of a car crash, off to the side of the road, complete with flowers, pictures and other kinds of things one puts at a tombstone (I assume other trinkets are also at a grave site) . So, those who engage in this very public mourning and memorializing are acknowledging quite obviously that the loved one is dead…yet in conversations many would say “so & so passed away”? In the example of the stickers on cars, it looks like an advertisement that the person is dead, but no one will actually say “so & so died”.

Why do we avoid saying “so & so died”? We say we lost someone, or they went to the light, into that good night or—hell I’m guilty of it too, I once said right here on this blog someone was “gone”—as if he just went to the store for milk or something. See how quickly my mind changed about the euphemisms? Lost is the one that really disturbs me, because in my literal mind, I may know that the person is dead, and I immediately assume the body was misplaced.

I find these euphemisms silly, and annoying. I especially hate them in Cancer World, where there are combined with the warrior/military language. Given the fact that both here on my blog and in real life I’ve been called “honest”, “candid”, and “direct”, is it really any surprise that I say any of this?

Or is it just in Cancer Land that the battle phrase is used? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone say their friend/loved one “lost their battle” to heart disease, to stroke, to complications from surgery, to old age (although many of us wage war on that one, don’t we, with our make-up, night creams, etc.?). Although I will say I often hear someone had a heart attack. “Is he ok?”, “No, he passed.” See, no d-word again.

But of course, the battle language of cancer must be upheld, and it is all part of the blame-the-patient package. The patients must be responsible for all aspects of their special cancer…their poor diet/drinking/not having kids caused cancer in the first place, and in the event of death, it is NOT due to the treatments not being effective enough, oh no, it must be because the patient had a bad attitude and/or did not fight hard enough, therefore making him/her a loser.

The reason I insist we need to say the d-words is because it needs to be up-front-and-in-your- face that cancer kills, in an active, personal away. To say one of us lost the battle, like we are bad soldiers, is an insult. It has been said before and I simply parrot it here: I’m NOT a soldier although I suspect my body is a battlefield in which cancer and treatment fought one another bitterly. I was just kind of…there, getting the environmental impacts, like a scarred landscape for instance.

Like Nancy’s mother I do not want the obituary to say I passed away after the battle with cancer (although I do not presume to know why she said that or what she wanted instead). If I die of cancer before I reach the average age at which American women die, then it is cancer that killed me and I want that known.  I want it known that cancer killed me, that medicine and lack of research into prevention failed me, I did not fail in the war.

So for me, no passing away, no losing of any battles, no raging against the dying of the light. Death from cancer is not the time for poetic language, if I’m the one doing the dying.