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My Cancer Sucks… Prompt Answers
Getting to know about the sides of cancer we don’t always see
Hi! These are my answers to the Cancer Sucks…publication prompt I set here:
- What is something you wish more people understood about cancer?
For me it would have to be this: people with cancer are just. like. you. I know that scares some people, and I understand why. But it hurts when you treat us differently. Especially if you know us.
It’s weird and alienating and it upset and angered me many times during and after my treatment. Sometimes it’s subtle, other times less so. I know no one wants to think it can happen to them, that cancer is some boogeyman that won’t visit your doorstep if you pretend he’s not there.
But it affects the people going through it to have others not acknowledge that cancer (royally) sucks, that we can’t “stay positive” all the time (and by the way we shouldn’t have to!), and any other myriad of cliches they might fling our way to ease their own discomfort rather than simply addressing us like we are the same person we have always been.
Don’t ignore our cancer, but also don’t pretend like it’s some easy obstacle we just have to get through. Toxic positivity is the WORST when it comes to dealing with this disease.
Cancer isn’t something that anyone is prepared to have happen to them for the most part, and we need to be given a much wider berth to feel our feelings around it and express them, on a basic level.
2. What is something (in particular) that surprised you during your own experience of it?
This maybe came with time. But just the fact that I could get through things that I previously could not have imagined. I was 28 at diagnosis, 29 when I finished treatment. I thought I had lived a life, but really, I had no idea what life can throw at you out of the blue.
3. Would you do anything differently about how you handled your treatment/diagnosis?
