Does skin cancer count as School of Hard Knocks? If it's the kind that doesn't require chemo or radiation, can you wear it as a badge of honor?
Once i made a joke about cancer in jr high, and my friend got angry and not-my-friend anymore.
Try sitting at their table at lunch today, yoyo. It's been a few weeks.
#1. Those are the kinds of class distinctions we make at cancer meetings.
Best Unfogged post in quite some time.
4: Know what's better than winning the cancer olympics?
Winning in a dead heat? I dunno, what's better than winning the cancer olympics?
Last Saturday's Washington Post had an opinion piece on the Cancer Hero. (It's Cancer, Not a Moral Crucible was the headline.)
The author's main point was that acting as if people with cancer were heroes is dishonest and distancing. Interesting timing as it ran on the same day as the Komen Foundation's event in DC.
I was ripping on an offensive joke about the Special Olympics. I found a link with the joke, but I kind of feel like a jerk now.
Also, if you read the earlier posts on this by dooce , the first case seemed to feel like a fluke result from tanning as a kid. The second one seems to upgrade it from a fluke to "oh shit, can this be chronic?"
Although you forgot to add that another upside is that one gets to be the Cancer Expert and write Deep Posts that say True Things No One Wants to Admit (like "getting cancer once is totally exciting and has major upside")--and that presumably this upside is much more so once one's recovered.
(3: Brilliant!)
I find her the constant suspicion all too fuckin' accurate. I can feel my HR zoom up every time I notice my foot's gone to sleep, a contact lens shifts and my vision changes, or I can't instantly recall the word I want, etc. Then I go through the "Is it another stroke?" inventory. I could easily live without this random self-induced drama.
The link in 8 is good.
Actually, she sounds kind of annoying.
Is it a form of "Privilege" that i really am never offended by jokes?
14: You're probably right, you plucky survivor.
This post makes a very good point.
You think you're over something...and then you're not. Psychologically devastating.
like the paranoia that follows on one's home being burgled.
Twisty had a really good post about the cancer survivor thing recently.
My uncle had skin cancer. He's over it now, but he'll have that nice hospital staph infection for the rest of his life.
I find it shortsighted that JKR didn't put cancer survivors in the Harry Potter books.
21: Apparently so is her experience of cancer.
That link in 19 is written in an extremely annoying way. I find myself much less sympathetic to its message that I was before I read it.
My uncle had a tumor in his neck, (in the spine). The way it presented itself was that his neck spontaneously broke one day at breakfast.
He spent the next few months in a halo, while doing all the basic cancer stuff, but he's pretty good now.
21: I think kinda the point is that she isn't obligated to be pleasant. In any case, I think she's funny and honest and fabulous.
27: He'd been complaining that his neck had been hurting, and had seen a physical therapist, but the tumor hadn't been caught on the x-ray.
Re-reading 19, I honestly don't even see what's unpleasant or annoying about it at all. Is this some version of "how dare you be so violent"?
25: Heebie always has to one-up people.
My uncle only knew he had cancer when the cancer bug bored its way out of his chest and flew screeching away, leaving nothing behind but a horrible stench.
Okay, but you're being way Berkeley.
presumably this upside is much more so once one's recovered.
Ain't it the truth. Ogged, how do you feel about neuticles?
Gawd help me, but I agree with B in 29. I'm not trying to draw you in, somehow, ogged. It's just that I'm predisposed to think that an IHTP post is likely to be irritating, and that one really wasn't at all.
37: ? Fairly common acronym for the name of the blog, no?
38 thrills me no end. Finally, proof!
Ah. I don't really read it, and misremembered the name.
Twisty's being Twisty, is all, and I can't say it doesn't bother me. Then again, I hid the fact that I had cancer from my spouse/friends/family, so I'm certainly of the suffer-in-silence (as opposed to the make-other-people-miserable-with-your-misery) school in this respect.
Also, "crapulence" doesn't mean what she thinks it means.
42: That all y'all boys literally don't even hear what we say b/c you can't help filtering it through some kind of "don't be mad at *me*" filter.
I can't believe you needed as much as that for sufficient proof, B.
To be fair, IHTP (better known as IHTFP) is an acronym that SCMT may have come into contact with in the past. But this still might prove whatever b thinks was proven.
44: Um, I think there's, like, an intentional sorta referential symbolism in her use of that word? Hello?
I was going to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, but then I thought it would exhibit bad taste. Those of you who would have liked it, can imagine me doing it, and the rest of you, shouldn't.
47, see also 44/49. Seriously, guys, it's like you're all deaf, not just SEK.
Jesus Christ, from the JK Rowling is sexist thread to a thread about Twisty. For the love of god, people.
49: Of course there is, but if the word "fuckalicious" actually meant "adj. to pick posies like a Quaker, with soft regret and peace in one's heart," you'd balk at its appropriation as an internal reference too.
SEK has a fuckalicious smile on his face.
52: My bad. I really didn't mean to derail the post/thread.
52: I thought you weren't going to talk about it. Also, it was JK and race, not sex.
People who want things to be louder and funnier should just cut to the chase and make some cock jokes, already. Don't sit around waiting for us to do it for you, because you won't like the results.
("[Male Unfogger's (probably Ogged's)] cock? Screamingly funny!" is how we would start.)
51: Just because I'm crying w-lfs-n doesn't mean I'm filtering any bit of anything.
Granted, I'm no breast cancer survivor, but I still don't think her attitude (as expressed there) is all that productive. Yes, you feel like shit. Yes, you want to cry/puke/punch all the time. So the fuck what? Life is tough, and when you get cancer, chemo is a part of life. You deal as best you can with it; you don't turn into a petulant child. I can't tell you how many times I was disturbed by the people in my oncologist's office, by how they seem to have used their current condition to engage in a lifetime's worth of whining. Drove me nuts, it did.
And yes, you'd think there was some sort of cancer-survivor fellowship, but there isn't. It's not that I don't have sympathy, mind you.
58: Why does her attitude have to be productive? The "so what" part is that, as you say, that's how it feels. It's okay for her to say so.
The Twisty post is a good, funny bit of venting. I enjoyed it, right down to the flourishes like "macabre lump of feminine acquiescence."
I've tried several times to explain why it's appropriate for me to be annoyed by something that's obviously designed to be annoying, but it's hard to explain. Of course she has the right to write that way. SEK gets it right.
"obviously designed to be annoying"
Disagreed. And there's a big difference between "it's not writing I like" to casting aspersions on the character of the author or complaining that she's being "petulant," as SEK does.
For one thing, it reveals a remarkable insensitivity to tone; SEK should be ashamed on professional grounds alone.
60: Attitude matters because it's contagious: it infects those immediately around you, as well as everyone you encounter as you go through chemo -- and this includes other patients. I've seen people like Twisty in survivor's group, and they poison the environment. (It's why I left both of the ones I tried to attend. For the first few meetings, they were helpful; but all it took was one person to start complaining and they turned into a no-one-can-understand-me-I-had-real-pain competition. I'm probably more bitter about this than most, but I do think gratitude toward medical science is in order when you survive something that would've been a death sentence as recently as 20 years ago.
63: She's arguing that she should be able to complain, whenever and to whomever, because she went through something terrible. I did too, and I'll be taking the pills the rest of my life to prove it. (See how annoying that is? I'm saying "Take my point seriously because I'll be on hormone replacement therapy the rest of my life." It's true, but if I went around complaining about it all the time, I'd annoy myself to death.) I know there's a difference in body-image with breast cancer survivors, but in the past two years, I've 1) gained 20 lbs., 2) lost 30 lbs., 3) gained 50 lbs., and 4) lost 20 lbs. This is what cancer/chemo does to the body, and it's something every survivor has to deal with. If you don't suck it up, you end up one of those octogenarians for whom the only topic of conversation ever is a frequently updated litany of minute complaints about how you feel.
You deal as best you can with it; you don't turn into a petulant child.
Everyone has the inalienable right to be petulant on their on blog. I don't read Twisty regularly, but nothing about the post linked in #19 seems very remarkable. She feels like shit, she's probably up to her ass in medical bills, and she's annoyed at everyone who keeps asking "But are you ok?" There's nothing very surprising about this. Because I don't know Twisty, I don't care to judge the point at which "venting" becomes "whining."
On the other hand, considering the alternatives in the circumstances, feeling like shit is still a pretty good deal. And SEK's point that attitude can have a real effect on recovery is a good one.
I know that if I had cancer, I'd find the obligation to be a hero and to always be upbeat and to turn the whole thing into a Positive Growth Experience to be really oppresive. The flip side of the idea of beating a dangerous disease with sheer positive thinking is that f you die it's your fault for not being enough of a "fighter." I'd want support, and support to me would mean in part that I wouldn't have to spend a lot of energy sugarcoating what I was going through for the comfort of everyone around me. I don't mean that I'd want to bitch constantly or unload on strangers in the supermarket, but that I'd want to be able to admit every once in a while that chemo feels crappy and is no fun whatsoever without getting a goddamn pep talk about it.
In fairness to Twisty, the sense I get is that she is really not as in-your-face in person as she is in the rant in question. I'm not sure I could conclude much about her attitude to recovery from that particular post. (If she is relentlessly that way or goes out of her way to inflict that attitude in person on other survivors, that's different.)
Eh, the "attitude can affect recovery" thing is annoying; the implication is that people who die or don't do well have a bad attitude.
It's fine to not like people who complain. It's also fine to think that people who hate justified complaints are being insensitive and judgmental.
And in any case, she isn't complaining or being petulant; she's being *angry*. Which again, you don't have to like. I, personally, don't like people whose discomfort around anger makes them unkind.
As is so frequently the case, The Onion gets it right.
"On the other hand, considering the alternatives in the circumstances, feeling like shit is still a pretty good deal. And SEK's point that attitude can have a real effect on recovery is a good one."
"It could be worse" never works so well. "Your balls could be in a vice!"
Neither does "God only gives you as much as you can handle."
Pfft.
I wouldn't have to spend a lot of energy sugarcoating what I was going through for the comfort of everyone around me
Exactly.
It's fine to not like people who complain. It's also fine to think that people who hate justified complaints are being insensitive and judgmental.
Yeah, I think this is where we differ on the gender arguments and on this, and probably on more besides. I have no patience for people who talk about their own misery/oppression/suffering. So undignified.
It's hard to be dignified when you're in physical pain, as I'm sure you know.
And if people didn't get angry about unfair things, the unfair things wouldn't change.
Look, I can speak with authority on this because I have very minor health problems that no one but Ogged truly understands. Credibility established, I can now say that the Twisty post didn't bother me partly because it's her blog. If she were like that in group, or in all parts of her life, ok, that's a problem, but I imagine that if I were in her situation it would feel pretty good to stop the "tough survivor" bit and just say: this sucks.
Plus, and I'm sure you know this as well, snark and bitter humor are ways that people maintain a sense of dignity in the face of things that would otherwise make them cry. There are lots of people who'd rather be angry as hell than have some asshole offer them a hug.
I have very minor health problems that no one but Ogged truly understands
Your enormous cock is not a health problem, and we're tired of hearing you pretend to complain about it.
Though Twisty doesn't explicitly make this point, part of it has to do with the expectations placed on women even when we're healthy, I think. Women are supposed to be pleasant and self-sacrificing at the best of times, and if we have breast cancer we're also supposed to be noble and heroic and be a role model for all around us by (quietly!) learning the Profound Life Lessons cancer has to teach us. Good on Twisty for calling bullshit.
B, I only agreed with you because I thought there'd be sex.
I have no patience for people who talk about their own misery/oppression/suffering. So undignified.
Is this partly cultural? I know you've said that a large part of Persian culture is hospitality and making people feel comfortable. Is part of it that complaining violates those social conventions?
Oh, right, how cute; Ogged's being persian again.
80: Oh. Well, stop trying to manipulate me with that being nice bullshit and just ask.
You know what really sucks? I lose at gay and straight chicken.
78: Also, we've all seen that your colon is as bright and rosy as a tropical sunset, so I don't know what information Ogged would be privy to that we don't already know about.
85: Ogged's the only one of us who's a big enough ass to take Labs's cock without wincing.
82 - Hrmpf. This is why whitey never tries to understand the mysterious Brown Others.
89: Luckily, you have a sense of humor. So many Persians don't.
flourishes like "macabre lump of feminine acquiescence."
I'd like that better if it weren't her description of Susan Mitchell's reconstructed breast.
I could also be an immigrant, according to SCMTim. So many things I didn't know about myself.
93: Yeah, fair point. It seemed better to me that it was somewhat in tune with Mitchell's own dissatisfaction about the process... but come to think of it, maybe that's actually worse.
"Your balls could be in a vice!"
It ain't all it's cracked up to be.
Here's where it's too bad that Apo's too busy with that damn baby to provide us an appropriate link.
Not to derail things when we've finally gotten to the cock jokes or anything, but it seems to me that an awful lot of the negative reaction to Twisty's post is based on not reading her blog and/or not knowing her story. For instance:
She wouldn't get within a mile of a survivor's group, so her presumed attitudinal effects on others in such a group are irrelevant.
She didn't just have breast cancer; testing showed a genetic predisposition to female-type cancers in general (too technical?), and so she had every female-type organ removed. This is a pretty extraordinary life change (this is alluded to in the post, but I don't think made clear to drive-by readers).
It was very clear from her posts during her intensive chemo period(s) that she wasn't at all the type to poison a waiting room.
Despite her general "bad" attitude (patriarchy-blaming and Komen-hating and the like), this post was venting - a break from, if not heroic silent suffering, then low-level bitching.
So, bottom line, don't hate a blama.
Hey ogged, it looks as though part of your country is about to be hit with its first tropical cyclone.
98 kinda gets at why I don't get why people don't like Twisty. It seems obvious to me that part of why she writes the way she does is because she *is* so attuned to social expectations (I think the tipoff is that she's funny as well as angry)--it's just so clear that the blog is, in part, a kind of running stream-of-consciousness that's at odds with what one is "really" "like."
100: The problem is just that the humour doesn't always come off. In this case, it mostly does.
43: Dude, you hid cancer from your spouse? I would kill my husband for that, if I had one.
103: What's the biggie? It's not like he hid it from his comment-thread peers.
43: Dude, you hid cancer from your spouse? I would kill my husband for that, if I had one.
Yeah, this seems downright weird, Scott.
Admittedly, I stopped reading IBTP after the wreck of a trans-people-aren't-really-gay conversation, so I'm not in the best position to judge ... but from what I remember, I don't get the sense that she's that different off-line than on-line. She'd post about confronting strangers in restaurants, yelling at people who tried to talk to her about [X, Y, or Z], &c. Sure, these people were 1) staring at her, but 2) I think she defies the "shrinking violet" stereotype off-line too. And as far as that goes, more power to her. That said, righteous feminist ire is one thing; righteous cancer-survivor ire another.
Eh, the "attitude can affect recovery" thing is annoying; the implication is that people who die or don't do well have a bad attitude.
Actually, I don't think is. Neuroscientific surveys I'm too tired to cite have actually looked at the immuno-response of optimistic vs. pessimistic people, and found that the optimistic were better able to ward off secondary infections; needed less pain medication (and thus suffered fewer side-effects both of the medication and withdrawal); &c. I'm not saying a positive attitude will save your life -- obviously not the case -- only that the social conventions against prolonged public suffering do serve some purpose.
Hell, to use myself as an example: if I hadn't suffered in silence, I wouldn't have been teaching (a distraction from the pain/mortal dread); would've gotten no work done (a distraction from the pain/mortal dread); would've had my wife/parents/friends constantly monitoring my health (not a distraction from the pain/mortal dread). While I still think I made the wrong decision, I think in the grand scheme of things, I was better able to remain a sense of normalcy because I suffered in secret.
I can see hiding it from a loved one until you have a certain diagnosis to keep them from worrying possibly needlessly, especially if they're the type to freak out. (I didn't tell my mom anything about L'Affair Blindness because I knew she'd be a wreck for weeks while I was undergoing tests.) But once you know for sure? That's different.
You're setting up an insane dichotomy, SEK. You can bitch about feeling crappy and still go to work. And, y'know, correlation not causation and all that; it's just as likely that people with lower pain thresholds are more optimistic as a result, or that both factors are symptoms of some other thing altogether.
103, 105: In my defense, my cancer played tricks on my mind, and at first I mistook it for depression and started therapy and popping happy pills. I wasn't entirely in my right mind.
107: But once you know for sure? That's different.
My thought at the time was: 1) my oncologist called it "the athlete's foot of cancer," so it couldn't be that serious; 2) the treatments would annoy me, but I had another medical problem at the time (related, of course) which I did tell her about and whose side effects I could foist the chemo symptoms off onto; 3) my sessions were on days she was in class from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m., so she wouldn't know I was gone; and 4) as mentioned, I was bat-shit insane at the time.
SEK, she knows now, doesn't she?
Unfogged is a superb marriage counsellor.
113: Am I being gullible? Really?
Unfogged *am* a superb marriage counsellor.
116: Yes. No. In your defense, however, I'm an odd bird.
i read an article recently that said most private detectives in NYC make their money from wives who are worried that their husbands are sneaking off in the middle of the day to get chemo.
Once you've hid that you're getting chemotherapy from your spouse, how exactly do you break it to them? That sounds right up there with, say, admitting that you had a long and well documented history of adultery. (Not in severity of offense, but in difficulty of having the conversation.)
He didn't have to say anything. An old friend called his wife up and told her that SEK had accidentally posted pictures of his doctor to his open photobucket account.
I started it, but this sequence of jokes should probably not go forward.
123--
i think 120 gives me grounds for disputing that credit.
but, yeah, adultery jokes with real married people who use their real names on-line aren't so funny, if they get carried away and start acting forward. the jokes, that is.
Once you've hid that you're getting chemotherapy from your spouse, how exactly do you break it to them? That sounds right up there with, say, admitting that you had a long and well documented history of adultery. (Not in severity of offense, but in difficulty of having the conversation.)
Not that she wasn't pissed, but I broke it to her a couple months after the fact, once her second quarter of graduate school ended. It was one of those sincere, "You know how I've been a little under the weather lately" talks. Told her it could've been serious, but I'd been getting treatments and I'm going to be fine, &c.
At the time, there were two people having sex in the room.
"So you were potentially going to just go and die without even telling me beforehand?!??!!"
125: I think a sincere tone was the right choice.
If SEK thought he was going to die he would have sneaked out and curled up under the porch where nobody could find him. It's his way.
But then somebody would crawl in to have sex under there.
not to minimize your experience, but my mom has had skin cancers since I can remember being conscious. When I was little her docs assistants let me play in the office while she was being treated.
Hers are squamous cell, they present as things that look like pearly bubbles of skin. They used to take a great hunk of skin and what's beneath, now they just hit them with a nitrogen-filled q-tip and put a bandaid on it. squamous cell is no big thing because it is very very slow.
My father had basal cell carcinoma on his face from too much sun and the treament was a bit worse. And melanoma is a deadly skin cancer but it can be treated with a patient-deerived vaccine. Basal cell can apparently metastasize but fairly slowly, melanoma can be deadly really fast.
Wishing you well.
Thanks, dragonet2, but I don't have skin cancer, that's dooce. I had kidney cancer which was caught early and removed.
I hope you're taking your advice to heart.