Had relatives die of cancer. Had a former coworker die of cancer: what was she... 29? 30? I work in cancer prevention because I think it's important, but cancer treatment depresses me too much (depends on cancer type, but when you're looking at a disease where you expect 40% of the people to die within 1 year, I can't deal with it. And that's not even one of the more lethal ones, like, say, pancreatic cancer).
Occasionally someone will get the bright idea that we are too disconnected from the patients and really need to see what they deal with. I found the cancer deaths I mentioned above to be deeply traumatic at the time, and they still upset me. I hope desperately to die suddenly of a heart attack. (2 grandparents: lung cancer. 1 grandparent: Alzheimer's. 1 grandparent: heart attack, after multiple angioplasties and bypass surgeries. The years of heart disease were horrible, but I'd still prefer the heart attack.)
I'm still angry that supervisors thought it would be a useful group activity to watch "Wit" at work so we could appreciate what cancer patients experience and what we're trying to accomplish. This was years ago, and I'm still angry about it. I should have said that I'd seen enough people close to me die of cancer that I didn't need to see it acted out in a movie, but I thought at the time that it was better to endure the experience than to draw that much attention to myself. Instead, I spent the movie variously replacing Emma Thompson with the people I knew who had died. I got to watch them die again. This wasn't good for me.
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Had relatives die of cancer. Had a former coworker die of cancer: what was she... 29? 30? I work in cancer prevention because I think it's important, but cancer treatment depresses me too much (depends on cancer type, but when you're looking at a disease where you expect 40% of the people to die within 1 year, I can't deal with it. And that's not even one of the more lethal ones, like, say, pancreatic cancer).
Occasionally someone will get the bright idea that we are too disconnected from the patients and really need to see what they deal with. I found the cancer deaths I mentioned above to be deeply traumatic at the time, and they still upset me. I hope desperately to die suddenly of a heart attack. (2 grandparents: lung cancer. 1 grandparent: Alzheimer's. 1 grandparent: heart attack, after multiple angioplasties and bypass surgeries. The years of heart disease were horrible, but I'd still prefer the heart attack.)
I'm still angry that supervisors thought it would be a useful group activity to watch "Wit" at work so we could appreciate what cancer patients experience and what we're trying to accomplish. This was years ago, and I'm still angry about it. I should have said that I'd seen enough people close to me die of cancer that I didn't need to see it acted out in a movie, but I thought at the time that it was better to endure the experience than to draw that much attention to myself. Instead, I spent the movie variously replacing Emma Thompson with the people I knew who had died. I got to watch them die again. This wasn't good for me.