Many readers have sent along comments regarding my breast cancer issues. I’d like to share some of them:
- The one piece of unsolicited advice I will give is: be very careful where you go looking for information on the Internet. It is a scary process and the information is often inaccurate.
- Reading your comments about breast cancer hit close to home, as I am one of the many who have been told to watch and monitor the calcium dots that appear in my mammos each year. You are giving others an opportunity to pass on info they have gathered. Maybe some of these medical battles wouldn't be quite so frightening if we shared our experiences more readily.
- Surely you have learned from the many survivors you have photographed that breast cancer is not a death sentence for some of us - it’s merely a bump in the road.
- You have too much work ahead of you to let a few little cells get you down. Do what you gotta do, take care of yourself, and know that there are many, many of us standing beside you.
- I think the most important thing is to trust your doctor, and to get a second opinion (if only to confirm the first opinion).
- Be strong, girl! (It's not the disease, it's the medical establishment you'll need strength for!)
- Cancer sucks! The love and friendsips – concern from others – priceless.
- Eleven years ago this month I had a mastectomy - my left breast, and was very fortunate that no lymph nodes (23 removed) were found to have cancer cells. I was also fortunate in having a calm, optimistic attitude throughout the surgery and recovery, and the surgeon was not only amazed but said very positively that this was a very good factor in the success of my treatment.
- Let me know how it goes with the docs, as well as inside your heart and head. All get a voice in this journey, in addition to your body!
- Remarkably, when I look back at my fight against breast cancer, I don’t view it as a negative. As a result, I feel like I’ve become stronger with clearer priorities.
- If you ever had any qualms about privacy of your body, well throw them right out the window. I never guessed how many persons I would be exposing my breasts to when this started. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a prude but any means, but to have several people walk into a room and ask you to disrobe for this test or that test… well, let’s say you get used to it. I tried to find a bright spot I could hang onto. That’s usually when my perverse sense of humor took over. Right after the “wires” go into place and you think “surely they can’t think up another test” your nurse comes to get you and says, “We need to do a mammogram.” How can you possibly have the breasts squeezed into that machine with those wires in there? All I could think of as I walked down the hall was, “I wonder if I could get a radio signal with all of this wire!” So off I go trundling down the hall with the wires hanging out. What a lovely sight that must have been. I guess what I am trying to say is we all have had pain involved in the “process": but most are still here to talk about it. That is the real bottom line and the best hope for any women with the diagnosis.
- There are some situations--divorce, disease among them--where even though the numbers are high, there is no comfort in numbers. Everyone has a story they can share, but still, it is all individual and very deeply personal.
- I've been mulling what to say to you and the deal is, I have no idea what to say. It's a rotten deal, but you will get through it.
(And, finally, the following excerpt from Blue Like Jazz, by a writer named Donald Miller, sent to me by a reader. I was thrilled to receive this. I heard Susan Sontag’s son on NPR’s “Fresh Air” the other day say that his mother absolutely hated the cancer/war metaphors. I had never really thought about it before, but obviously others have.)
- “It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen.
My realization came while attending an alumni social for Westmont College. I had never attended Westmont, but my friend Michelle did, and she invited me. Greg Spencer, a communications professor, was to speak, and Michelle thought I might enjoy the lecture. I did. More than I can say. The lecture was about the power of metaphor. Spencer opened by asking us what metaphors we think of when we consider the topic of cancer. We gave him our answers, all pretty much the same, we battle cancer, we fight cancer, we are rebuilding our white blood cells, things like that. Spencer pointed out that the overwhelming majority of metaphors we listed were war metaphors. They dealt with battle. He then proceeded to talk about cancer patients and how, because of war metaphor, many people who suffer with cancer feel more burdened than, in fact, they should. Most of them are frightened beyond their need to be frightened, and this affects their health. Some, feeling that they have been thrust into a deadly war, simply give up. If there were another metaphor, a metaphor more accurate, perhaps cancer would not prove so deadly.
Science has shown that the way people think about cancer affects their ability to deal with the disease, thus affecting their overall health. Professor Spencer said that if he were to sit down with his family and tell them he had cancer they would be shocked, concerned, perhaps even in tears, and yet cancer is nothing near the most deadly of diseases. Because of war metaphor, the professor said, we are more likely to fear cancer when, actually, most people survive the disease.
Mr. Spencer then asked us about another area in which he felt metaphors cause trouble. He asked us to consider relationships. What metaphors do we use when we think of relationships? We value people, I shouted out. Yes, he said, and wrote it on his little white board. We invest in people, another person added. And soon enough we had listed an entire white board of economic metaphor. Relationships could be bankrupt, we said. People are priceless, we said. All economic metaphors. I was taken aback.”
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