What does a person with cancer look like?
How should they act?
What kinds of things can they do? What can’t they do?
One Saturday, after I’d had a couple of chemo treatments and lost all my hair – but not my penchant for a glass of cabernet sauvignon of three in the evenings, or at lunch, or in a bath at 9am, or whenever I damn well pleased – we were invited to lunch at a friends house. As I poured myself a glass of yummy wine to have with lunch, I looked up to see one of my friends standing there glaring at me. Glaring. As he regarded me disdainfully, I smiled and raised my glass at him cheerily, to which he responded, “I see having cancer hasn’t affected your ability to knock back a drink.”
Er, the fuck?
Well, no. Nor has it affected my ability to knock out some of your teeth. Jerk.
I was mad. I felt judged. His inference seemed to be that people with cancer did not simply drink wine at lunch with friends. Perhaps he’d have felt more comfortable if I’d taken to a deckchair on the patio in the shade with a knee rug, all Barbara-Hershey-from-Beaches. He’d clearly wanted a cancer hero, and was disappointed to find I was more your cancer wino.
We’re not friends any more, by the way.
The people you know with cancer haven’t changed that much. It may be they may consider the personal transformation part of having cancer to be totally optional. Your friend with cancer may continue to smoke, drink, be selfish and obnoxious, talk negative (the nerve) and even refuse to drink organic juice five times a day. You have two options. You can deal with it, or not.
Cancer is a jerk. Sometimes we who must put up with it simply don’t want it to change us, for better or worse, because it is a jerk.
Let’s all not be jerks too.
*****
I love comments! Scroll down to tell me what you think.
Feel free to share and subscribe!
One of the things my dad (non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, small cell, stage 4) asked for at his going-away party was my aunt Pat’s old fashioneds. She brought a pitcher of them to the hospital. Someone else brought a bottle of champagne. Nobody lifted an eyebrow.
Of course, this was in Wisconsin, where drinking is a family affair.
(The two-pound bag of peanut M&Ms we had in his hospice room for two weeks went untouched. Not the miracle we were looking for.)
Yeah, I really needed to lose a few of those friends and just let myself loosen up. I’ve since made up for it
Thanks for coming by Gold Digger – don’t be a stranger!
I always laugh at how some people believe they know how everyone else should be. Preconception is part of it, but also general ignorance.
I became a born-again Christian when God came knocking on my head, and it was a few years later I ran into an old acquaintance who had heard about my conversion, but had not seen me.
After several hours of catching up, she laughed with relief and said: “I am SO GLAD you aren’t a Christian any more! I would have missed how fun you always are!”
I responded: “God didn’t steal my sense of humour, and I am actually still Christian, thank you! I don’t think God is as straight-laced and stuffy as many people imagine. He calls us ‘as we are’; not to suddenly wear demure white gloves and be June Cleaver.”
*laughs* Good to see someone ‘coming out’ as a living, breathing PERSON merely fighting cancer and not The Cancer Victim/Saint. I have always refused to be identified by my job, my upbringing, or whatever illness or physical condition has come against me. I remain “me”, no matter what.
I think the best thing anyone can do is be themselves and refuse to be victimised by anything (like illness) or anyone (like judgy non-wine-sharing ex-friends!).
Grey
I think you are someone I need to know, that’s what I think!