Cancer: The Cross-Examination Round
It amazes me how many people respond to the news of cancer with questions that are clearly designed to determine why you got it. In the beginning, this confused me-why were so many people assuming I smoked or asking if I did? Why were people so curious about whether it runs in my family? What's with this interrogation about my diet?
Over time, though, I've realized that the people asking these questions are really trying to soothe themselves. They are trying to explain away my cancer or put it in a container, so that they can reassure themselves that they won't get it. "Oh, well, she got cancer because she eats chicken, and you know about the hormones and antibiotics in that! I'm a vegetarian." Or, "She has a family history of cancer, I don't."
The unfortunate truth, though, is that people in all sorts of circumstance get cancer. I've met women who have eaten vegan, organic diets all their adult lives, never smoked, with no family history, and yet they got breast cancer. I've known women who've done "everything wrong" who are cancer-free. While there are definite risk factors that have been identified, there is no formula for true safety. If you're looking for guarantees, you'll find that it's a scary world. All you can do in life is make the best choices you can and hope it works out.
As much as I understand what's behind the questions, I wish people would stop asking. Not just stop asking me, but anyone who has cancer. That's because the urge to connect the dots can actually be hurtful to those who have been diagnosed. Cancer patients are often trying to figure out how they got cancer. We wonder what we did wrong. Did we eat the wrong foods? Drink too much in our twenties? Gain weight at the wrong time? Indulge in the wrong vices? The real cause is something that most of us never get to find out for sure.
Because these kinds of questions can trigger a self-examination that often leads to self-blame, it's better never to start this line of questioning at all. Trying to figure out "what we did to give ourselves cancer" is not helpful to healing.
I suppose what I'm really asking is that all of us - those with cancer and those without - accept the unknowing place that serious illness puts us in. Illness is not a time for why, at least, not for the layperson. It's a time for support, self-care, and rising to the challenge. We do this best as a group when we are not asking others to account for themselves.
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