CLICK HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES »

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Dear Cancer, F*** You. Sincerely, Me (And Everybody else)

I hate cancer.
No.  I F***ING HATE cancer.
Yeah.  That's much more like it.

Why all the ire?
Cancer sucks.  Great big donkey balls.
I have seen too many people I love, and just too many people in general have cancer.
I have an Aunt who just had a total double mastectomy.
My dad had skin cancer.
My grandfather did as well.
My great grandmother died of cancer at the age of 92.  It wasn't her age, but the cancer that finally did her in.
My mom's family is riddled with cancer.
My mom is a breast cancer survivor, as I have written about before.

I'm just hitting the tip of the iceberg, too, if I were to really delve into all the people I know that cancer has touched with its long, ugly, gnarly, blackened fingers.
Right now, I have a friend who is about to start chemotherapy for breast cancer.  She is a wonderful person.
She isn't post menopausal.  She isn't even in that age range.   Her body just decided to turn against her.
What are we, as women supposed to do?  I look in the mirror all the time, and note that my chances this becoming my future are very high.  Very.
There really aren't a lot of options if this is likely your future.  You can go the preventative route.
We have another good family friend who did just that.  Her mother, one of my own mother's very best friends in life, had breast cancer.  She passed away at a much younger age than she should have.  So, her daughter decided not to wait for this to be her future.  The Drs suggested a preventative double mastectomy, and she did it.  She wanted to be sure.  Its becoming common to take such steps, too.
I could do genetic testing, find out, and go from there, but the kind of cancer that runs in our family causes more than just breast cancer.  I couldn't lop enough organs off to stop everything that will try to kill me, if I am predisposed.
My friend who just started her fight has two beautiful boys who are close in age to The Big Girls, each one of hers being a year younger than mine.
Now, they have to watch mom go through cancer treatments.
No child should need to watch that.
Moreover, no child should have to go through cancer treatments themselves, but it happens all the time.
Yes, I am filled with anger and questions because of all this.  The big question, though, is what do we do from here? How do we stop this?  So much money is being thrown at a cure, but what about the cause?
Has it always been this bad and we didn't know it, or are we killing ourselves somehow now?
Something needs to be stopped.  Somewhere, we need to recognize what has changed to cause our bodies, our breasts that are meant to sustain life, in to weapons that will take it in an instant.

I'm not sure where the answer to all of this lies, but someone, somewhere, must.  We have to do something.  I love all of the beautiful survivors that I have in my life, but I don't want to add any more people to the list of those touched by cancer.