Cancer Ramblings
This NPR article resonated greatly with me. I hate seeing breast cancer being used to market things. I'm tired of pink. As I see it, the one good thing about it is that my sister Judi loved pink and was thus able to buy a pink Kitchen Aid stand mixer. But other than that.....enough pink. Awareness is great and it is wonderful but cancer still kills people in a nasty, nasty way and aware or not....people keep dying. And I just want people to stop dying. Judi didn't die from breast cancer, she died from bile duct cancer but either way it was horrible and cruel. To try to save you they fill your body with poison. Someday will we look at chemo the way we look at 19th century doctors bleeding people with leeches? I don't know. Honestly, I DO support drives for awareness...and I support friends that do walks and other things to raise money. But sometimes it's kind of like when school kids sell overpriced candy and wrapping paper. All I can think is, can't I just give the school a couple of dollars and we can skip this? And I get tired of the emphasis on breast cancer rather than just cancer overall. Yes, far too many women die of breast cancer, but far too many people die of prostate cancer and lung cancer and pancreatic cancer and..... It's as though all the cancers got together and held American Idol auditions and breast cancer won the marketing prize so now we can buy things like pink oreos. I don't want a pink oreo.
Awareness this and awareness that.....yet now they say men shouldn't get psa tests for prostate cancer as often. And that pains me because that's what led us to Ernie's cancer diagnosis. So when they say it leads to unnecessary treatment are they saying he doesn't matter? Of course...honestly, the surgery didn't catch it all so perhaps they are right. But to let his cancer, an aggressive form of prostate cancer, go further....eh, I don't know.
I remember talking with Judi when she was dying. Typically efficient, she wrote her own obituary. When she gave it to me she said, "oh, and don't say that I fought bravely or any of that stuff" and we laughed. Because it's not how hard you fight....it's just a nasty fucking disease and some people are luckier than others.
Fucking cancer.