Cancer Sucks

I had my 5 month check-up and everything is looking good.  My blood work is good.  I'm having minimal side effects from the anti-estrogen drug I'm on, which is amazing considering so many women have really horrid side effects from it.  Then again, I've had really nasty side effects from most of the rest of the drugs I've had so it's entirely possible that these just seem more tolerable as a result.  Kind of like how you don't mind a 2 inch snow after you've shoveled the 2 foot snowfall - everything is relative.

I'm on my way toward reconstruction, with a couple surgeries coming up in the new year.  All in all, I'm doing well. 

Except that I'm starting to get really ticked off.  

My friend's colon cancer is back already.  Another friend was diagnosed with a different cancer in May.  And just the other week the husband of yet another friend was diagnosed with yet another form of cancer.

My father had cancer, my father-in-law died from the same cancer that my father has survived.  Multiple of my cousins have had cancer, so far everyone's made it through. 

At my 30th high school reunion there were 4 of us there that had gone through breast cancer, and 1 that wasn't there because she lost her battle 2 years ago.  We lost at least 4 others to cancer, and it may have been more, I got too depressed counting.  One girl never even made it to graduation.  

And all this cancer is making me angry.

Odd thing is, I wasn't angry when it was just me.  I figured there's no good in being angry... no good in asking "why me" - because the real question to me was "why not?".  There is nothing so special about me that would make me exempt from getting cancer, so it sure didn't seem productive or helpful to get angry about it.

But now, I'm getting angry.  There is just too much cancer.  

Is it our environment?  Our diets?  Do people all around the world have as much cancer as we do in the United States? Or do we just have better health care, so we are able to diagnose it correctly?  

I know cancer has been around for a long time, but it sure seems like it's more and more prevalent.  Perhaps we're just diagnosing it more often now... and I suppose that it's good that we can identify it, but seriously, this whole thing seems so out of control.  

Cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in the US, and the leading cause of death in people aged 45-64.  It's also the 2nd leading cause of death in children 5-14.  And although the incidence of cancer in children under 15 dropped by 10% from 2005-2009, there is still something horribly wrong with 1286 young children dying from cancer.

The cancer society says that in 2012 we will have averted over 1 million deaths from cancer - and that is good news.  But we will also diagnose over 1.6 million new cases of cancer, for which about a quarter million will be breast cancer, a quarter million will be lung/bronchial and a quarter million will be prostate.            

So we walk and run and relay to raise money to find a cure... but cancer keeps on coming.  

For many cancers there is no reliable screening, like uterine and ovarian cancer.  So the cancer sneaks up and takes hold and by the time you have symptoms it's too late.

For for some, like breast cancer and prostate cancer and colon cancer, there are screenings.  They may not be perfect at detecting cancer, they may not be pleasant to go through, but they help many people catch their cancer in time.

Before I had cancer I would hear people talk about avoiding the doctor, avoiding the screenings because they were uncomfortable.  I would hear about people not feeling well, having clear symptoms that something in their body wasn't right, but so afraid of hearing bad news that they postpone going in to the doctor, when the reality is if the news is bad they've just made it a whole lot worse by waiting.

But since I've had cancer I think most people just don't admit those things to me anymore.  Seems a little silly to tell someone who's had a mastectomy that you're not getting a mammogram because "it hurts".  

Just like it would feel wrong to tell someone who's lost a loved one to cancer that you haven't had your screening because you're afraid they'll find something, when you know they are thinking how they'd wished a screening would have caught their mother's/ father's/ spouse's/ child's cancer earlier.  

Still, the fear is real.  It exists because of how prevalent cancer is.  

But more often the real reason we don't get our annual checkups is that we just don't prioritize it.  In our busy "human-doing" lives, we just don't make time for taking care of ourselves. We don't take time to eat right.  We don't take time to exercise regularly.  We don't take time to rest.  And we don't take time to get our screenings.  

October is breast cancer awareness month, but let it be your Cancer Awareness month.  Schedule your screenings and make sure those you love are doing the same.  And if you won't do it for you, then do it for your children, for your parents, for your husband or wife or partner in life.  Do it to bring purpose to what I've gone through.

And do it so that, if you should get cancer, you will live to pester someone else into getting their screenings.

And as my mother would say:  "end of lecture".