A friend of mine, who is not yet 30, was just diagnosed with cancer. So she’s putting everything else in her life on hold to move to a city with better specialists and spend at least six months going through chemotherapy and radiation. The doctors say it’s treatable but with the caveat that it’s cancer and cancer is always serious and you know, it’s possible that her cancer isn’t treatable and even if it is, she can pretty much count on her entire fucking life being on hold for about a year because this has to be her greatest priority, because if it’s not it will kill her.
FUCK this stupid awful worthless shitty disease.
I’m going to go scream furiously into the harsh uncaring void of the universe, because that’s the only way to direct any blame. I’m going to try not to think about my friend’s dad who died just about a year ago, less than a month after being diagnosed with cancer. I’m going to try not to think about my grandfather, because the only memories of him I have are of him getting increasingly sick and frail as cancer ate away his body. I’m going to try not to think of my uncle left behind three kids and a wife and a niece he never met, as he died the day I was born. I’m going to try not to think about my grandmother, who won against breast cancer but only after a total mastectomy; she said she was never ashamed of her body but she wanted those eight months of her life back.
A good friend of mine died in September after a four year fight with breast cancer. She was 46. She left behind an eighteen year old daughter and an eleven year old son. She was funny, well-read, thoughtful, kind and a good mother. The cancer clawed at her cruelly and she kicked it back as hard as she could. I rarely go a single day without thinking about how much I miss her.
Cancer sucks. My best wishes that your friend will beat it.
My aunt has just been diagnosed with cancer. We’ll know more in January when she has surgery. It could be no big deal . . . but it could be very, very serious.
Yep. The most pointless of all maladies, cells turning against themselves. Did both my parents in (well, Dad’s emphysema didn’t help), younger brother has had to deal with prostate cancer (successfully, so far), and looks like I’ll be starting treatment for the same thing early in the new year.
So yeah, fuck the fucking fuck out of fucking cancer, and best of luck to the OP’s friend.
All I can say is that cancer is like the dark side of the force. The utter resiliency of cells to keep surviving, the thing that makes multicellular life–and us–possible in the first place is the same resiliency that makes cancer possible and so deadly.
It killed both of my parents, aunts on both sides of the family, at least one uncle, and numerous persons in my wife’s family have fought it and lived. If there’s any hope for your friend; its that if they’ve caught it early, they have much better chances of beating it. I wish them the best of luck and the deepest of wisdom in their fight against this disease.
So yeah, fuck cancer with a rusty bottle brush. If you envision cancer as a hetero male, fuck it with a rusty battery terminal cleaner. Stupid repair system gone awry.
My empathy to everyone who’s been touched by this stupid bullshit. I managed to chat a bit over Skype with my friend yesterday - she’s a continent away and obviously busy trying to pack up literally everything to move on such short notice. The prognosis is really good, she’s handling it well, and she has a great support network (she’s moving back in with her mom). Obviously, there’s still a lot of unknowns and a lot of worries, but, well, that’s life.
There’s nothing in the world I could do with these days so much as a good fuck, so I’m reluctant to afford cancer something so rare and precious. Otherwise, yeah, absolutely, and I’m consoling my sons tonight because their grandmother has just passed and their grandfather is probably not far behind - in all honesty, until four hours ago we’d have bet money he’d go first. And my brother-in-law, not yet sixty, was diagnosed with a particularly nasty bowel cancer a couple of months back, and it’s unclear how long he’s going to last either. Then there was my own mother…
Oy. :smack:
We’re all mortal and nothing is more certain than that we will certainly die of something, but this isn’t pretty.
My mom was diagnosed with cancer in the early 60’s. Over the course of the next several years she had two radical mastectomies, complete hysterectomy, and several lymph nodes removal surgeries. She should have never survived the 60’s but by some miracle she did. She was the strongest woman I’ve ever known. She never let cancer define her and she never gave up.
I’m wishing the best outcomes for your friend, NinjaChick, and your mother, Baker.
Since this is the Pit and I’m waxing poetic over here, Fuck Cancer, Indeed.
Yeah, fuck cancer. A little more than a year ago, BOTH my parents were diagnosed with cancer. Both had pretty extensive surgery, but my mom died in june after it metastasized to the liver. Dad’s in relative good shape now, but it’s still too early to say whether it will spread or not. It’s been a tough year.
Sending my best hopes and wishes for Baker and mother, and NinjaChick and friend.
The worst damn awful thing about cancer is how long and how horribly so many victims suffer before they die. And that some victims die young, way before their time. If it weren’t for those facts, then cancer would just be another disease among many that kills you, right up there with heart attacks.
So if I’m ever diagnosed with cancer, I’m going to tell my doctor: Forget about trying to treat it, or maybe just make one attempt to treat it and if that doesn’t work then give up. It’s just self-torture to fight it the way some people do, and to subject oneself to such “heroic” (i.e., torturous) treatments that drag on and on and usually fail anyway.
Screw all that, doc. Just put me into full-bore aggressive palliative care and keep me reasonably comfortable and pain-free, and otherwise just let it run its natural course.
I’m so sorry to hear about your mother, Baker. I was following your other thread and am sad to see this outcome. They’ve come a long, long way in cancer treatments over the years. I deeply hope your mother responds well to treatment.
A short update on my mother, she’s doing fine, responded well to the chemo and radiation.
But I resurrected this zombie to say FUCK CANCER once again. A woman I know, wife of the dean at our cathedral, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, said to be “fast moving and agressive”
Dammit, she beat a tumor in her brain years ago(thanks be to God for the Mayo clinic) Now, as she and her husband are approaching retirement, and building a house, there’s this. We had a letter from the dean telling us about his wife, so he doesn’t have to tell the story over and over to each member of the congregation.
Life isn’t fair, and we have to learn how to cope with it. I learned that when I was a teen, reading one of Heinlein’s juveniles. But it still sucks. I wish we could know why people have to go through this.
U.S. Science guys discovered a cure for cancer in 1970. Richard Nixon and congressional Republicans kept it under wraps ever since because they are in the corner of Big Cancer. Even more profitable than keeping the Vietnam War going for another five years.
The Ukulele Lady went through breast cancer treatment five years ago, survived, and is doing well.
This is quite frequently the reasonable course of action. CTCA is wrong; there ARE types of cancer that nobody has ever recovered from.
And the cure for cancer was not discovered in 1970, or any other time. Keeping something like that under wraps would be harder than covering up the moon landing.