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author_by_night) wrote2015-06-22 07:32 pm
The Obsession With Cancer
This is a public entry, so I'm leaving personal details out of this. However, I can say that cancer has very much affected my life. It's also affected the lives of people around me, and which has made me think about the obsession society seems to have with cancer.
More behind the cut. PLEASE note that if cancer's especially upsetting for you right now, you may not want to read this. It isn't even easy for me to talk about this. But something has to be said - that is, other than "pray for people who are sick with cancer." Other than every other plot point in every other show/book/movie/comic book/televsion advertisement. Or, my personal favorite, "post where you like to
What needs to be said is: "Enough."
Because some of us don't want to hear about it all the time.
First, I'm not saying we should never talk about cancer. It's important that we do. I also would never want to take away someone's freedom to talk about it if it's healing for them. Some people need Facebook memes and Lifetime specials; they feel comforted and empowered by it.
But there's people for whom it's the kind of stark reality they just do not need. Cancer - whether you're the patient or the loved one - can be exhausting and dominate your life; sometimes it's near impossible to get away from. So when a woman has been crying all morning because she just learned her father has terminal cancer, and needs a break, something to cheer her up, and sees this on Facebook:
...you can understand her distress.
Some of these messages are even harsher, outright saying "if you care about cancer, if you give a damn, you'll share." You don't realize you just told a friend she doesn't give a damn about cancer while she's currently at her wit's end. And you don't necessarily know she's not - maybe she's been asked not to tell. Maybe she just doesn't want to. Maybe you barely know this person. Even if you don't have friends who are sick or have sick loved ones, that doesn't mean cancer isn't, nonetheless, a subject they'd rather avoid. It's not because they care more about their cellphones. It's because that is how they function.
There's another problem with some of these memes, too - they take pictures of kids who've already recovered, or died. This is extremely upsetting to the families of these children. If you care about cancer, please don't share those.
Cancer also tends to dominate a large portion of media, and that can also be tiring. It's fine to have cancer storylines, or storylines based entirely around cancer, but I really don't love it when it pops up unexpectedly. It would help if this didn't seem to be the dramatic go-to disease, to the point at which I'm always convinced a character'll be diagnosed with cancer if they as much as sneeze loudly. Yup, they have snot cancer! (Dark humor FTW.) The thing is, it's understandable because cancer's relevant. However, I sometimes wonder whether anyone realizes that relevance doesn't mean it's an easy topic to deal with. There's a lot of other kinds of deaths, and they tend to be more Hollywood friendly anyway, because so often Hollywood cancer looks something like this:
Of course, depending on the situation, a patient might look relatively "healthy" even if they're not, or like they are just mildly unwell. And it's understandable that they don't want to show people at their worst when the worst is generally not very pretty. But that's another reason for Hollywood to just have the character last seen stepping off the curb just in time for a huge bus to swing by. Next time we see them, they're in a coffin, because you can't make being run over by a bus pretty either.
My point isn't that we should stop talking about cancer, that it should never be in works of fiction, that people on Facebook shouldn't mention it, that patients, survivors and loved ones don't deserve a say. Of course they do. But it doesn't need to be a constant reminder when for some people, that's the very last thing they need.
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Bottom line, it should not be used for a fucking MEME. This is somewhat close to the front of my mine right now, not because anyone I know is dealing with cancer at the moment, but because (for reasons I'll get into on my own journal later) I just started watching 7th Heaven for the first time. I never watched it as a kid, and it's extremely schmaltzy, but the way they dealt with a family member dying of cancer REALLY pissed me off.
I remember the last time my mom was in the hospital, for her fifth (yes, fifth) round of cancer treatment (five separate TYPES of cancer, and five separate surgical procedures), and it was the first time she *really* looked sick. That was when it hit that one of these times, she's not going to make it. She looked like a corpse. It was scary.
Hollywood only tends to do that with AIDS. There's an analytical breakdown in there somewhere, but I don't have the energy to deal with it tonight.
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I haven't seen many things where characters have AIDS, so I can't comment on that.
I'm sorry about everything you and your mom went through - it's never easy.
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Hollywood definitely tends to go on the unrealistic side when it comes to cancer and other life-threatening illnesses :/
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I spent 4 months going through tests for breast cancer (pre-having an LJ) and find the "post what color your bra is" thing really offensive. I turned out not to have cancer, but because of extreme pain, I couldn't ever WEAR a bra for several years. A close friend of mine is struggling with breast cancer. How does joking on facebook help her? :P
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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.