Saturday, December 23, 2006
Preventing a Recurrence
Recently over at YSC, a discussion arose about how to prevent a recurrence of cancer.
Whereas I can understand people wanting to feel like they are being proactive about their health--and that they have some control over their destiny, this sort of topic always makes me angry. Will cutting out alcohol help? Taking vitamins? Exercise is the key, isn't it?
If by omitting something, or by adding something else one can prevent a recurrence, the implication is that I did something wrong. Did my cancer recur because I still drink diet soda? Did it recur because my BMI is too high? Did I just not pray hard enough?
This was my response:
A lot of literature focuses on breast cancer prevention--early screenings, better evaluation of whose cancer will be aggressive, a vaccine--but I also hope that everyone remembers we do also need a CURE for those of us who didn't get lucky in our treatment.
I'll be waiting.
Whereas I can understand people wanting to feel like they are being proactive about their health--and that they have some control over their destiny, this sort of topic always makes me angry. Will cutting out alcohol help? Taking vitamins? Exercise is the key, isn't it?
If by omitting something, or by adding something else one can prevent a recurrence, the implication is that I did something wrong. Did my cancer recur because I still drink diet soda? Did it recur because my BMI is too high? Did I just not pray hard enough?
This was my response:
I refuse to believe that anything I did, or did not do, contributed to my recurrence. I've suffered enough shock/grief/anger/sadness about it without adding self-recrimination.
But now in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle I avoid:
snorting asbestos
bathing regularly in benzene
eating used aluminum ashtrays
playing in traffic
leaping into a pit of wild ferrets while dressed in a suit made of steak
blaming myself for things I can't control.
A lot of literature focuses on breast cancer prevention--early screenings, better evaluation of whose cancer will be aggressive, a vaccine--but I also hope that everyone remembers we do also need a CURE for those of us who didn't get lucky in our treatment.
I'll be waiting.
Labels: cure, metastasis, prevention, YSC
Comments:
baa - ha - ha - ha!!
Add hanging Christmas lights off your roof while on enough meds to choke a mammoth.
Jeremy got to come home "early" from his transplant (they let him out for 2 days to go home, then go back. The doctors made him promise to be "careful." I told him when he got back to brag about going up on the roof to put up the Christmas lights; he decided he didn't know if the doctors had quite that kind of sense of humor. Um... well... I hear the squirrel in the chimney again. Gotta go - good luck living in the sterile, plastic, non-carcenogenic bubble. Let me know where to find it.
Add hanging Christmas lights off your roof while on enough meds to choke a mammoth.
Jeremy got to come home "early" from his transplant (they let him out for 2 days to go home, then go back. The doctors made him promise to be "careful." I told him when he got back to brag about going up on the roof to put up the Christmas lights; he decided he didn't know if the doctors had quite that kind of sense of humor. Um... well... I hear the squirrel in the chimney again. Gotta go - good luck living in the sterile, plastic, non-carcenogenic bubble. Let me know where to find it.
# posted by 
: 12:26 PM
: 12:26 PM
AMEN!!!
And may the Good Lord save us from "friends" who forward the latest and greatest I ate frog poop for 6 weeks and cured my cancer articles.
And dear me don't even get me started on the "Prevention" crap.
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And may the Good Lord save us from "friends" who forward the latest and greatest I ate frog poop for 6 weeks and cured my cancer articles.
And dear me don't even get me started on the "Prevention" crap.
# posted by : 2:43 AM
: 2:43 AM 
