More personal thoughts…

I exchanged some interesting email over what I wrote about the whole “think positive and you’ll be just fine” thing I posted a last week. Most agreeing, but two were rather upset with me about it. I stand by what I said (as I do everything published here), I do think it’s an issue and I get the supporters have different coping mechanisms and that being positive may be important to some.

My first thought was that they came across as rather selfish people, but after a little thought I decided I was being very unfair. They need a way to cope too. It’s something that it’s easy to overlook and my initial reaction was “it’s about the patient!” was somewhat unreasonable. Others are affected by it too, have their own reactions and I was unfair in dismissing those.

It’s not about an individual, while some peoples wishes carry more weight than others, it is how everyone works as a group to support each other that matters. For me humour is important, no matter how dark it gets.

Over the last year I understand my ex has expressed the wish that I die to her friends, OK I get there was emotion that accompanied those outbursts, she regularly said it about her kids dad, so I’ve heard it before.

I’m not planning on making her day any time soon. She also thought the timing was “convenient” and I don’t understand for what, but she does live in an interesting world.

Friday I got an email from someone that so caught what I meant that I replied and also asked permission to publish some here.

In part she said “I loved your post [the positive thinking one] it is something some of those around have been sucked into believing, and they are days when I just did not feel positive. [A friend] even gave me a book that that said I was somehow to blame for my melanoma. I became furious at the suggestion that I went through his because I wanted to…”

I have never heard that before, but a little searching found that this is a surprisingly widely held belief and there are indeed a number of authors making money off this.

The books framed accusing questions, such as “Why did you need to get cancer?” that suggest that the patient must have willed it to happen.

While doing a little digging I did find a piece touching on this from a former mayor of Princeton, Barbara Boggs Sigmund. It was a New York Times editorial in which she talked of her anger at a writer that wrote “I had caused my own cancer” through a “lack of self-love, and that consequently, it was up to me to cure it.” Barbara Boggs Sigmund died of cancer aged 51.

There is a theory that (and again I quote Ms. Sigmund, who is far more literate than I) “cancer cells are internalized anger gone on a field trip all over our bodies”.

Talk to a doctor, the cause for most tumors is at best unclear any perceived lack of self-worth on my part has no role in growing the bitch behind my right ear.

Yes I’m calm about it, I was told unnaturally so last week, but as I said before a combination of denial and the stoic “get on with it” is how I deal with it (and looking forward to a grand prix weekend was a huge distraction last week). I have some of the best people around me on many levels, from a top-notch surgeon to wonderful friends who seem to know what to say.

To surmise some of the reading I’ve done over the last few days. Every day we learn more about tumour prevention and treatment, yes there are habits and environmental factors that do increase cancer risk. But aside from cigarette smoking and lung cancer, the links are just not that clear cut when it comes to the cause of most growths.

I was talking to a doctor about this last night and he was fully aware of this blaming the patient for the disease thing. He said that it probably comes from that the fact that cancer has been a mystery for so long, both the cause and cure. His thought was that when we know little about something it becomes even more frightening and ideas like this develop in an attempt to explain it.