Dispelling Cancer Myths

Cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer!

Sheesh, you probably say, does this woman think about anything else besides CANCER?

Truth is, I think about A LOT of other things besides cancer. In fact, I’ve hardly thought about cancer at all in the past month because I have been so busy trying to make important changes in my life. But time and time again I come up with more things I want to write about the subject, and let’s be honest, don’t you want to read about life with cancer from someone who actually IS living life with cancer? Instead of a so-called “expert” who writes for one of those cheesy medical sites? Thought so.

This time around I will expand on something I’ve toyed with in other posts: myths about cancer. I have five biggies to cover, fictitious beliefs that I have encountered time and again in the past three years of my “journey.” Here goes!

People get lung cancer from smoking. Therefore, they deserve it. This is totally false, and I know this firsthand. While I smoked long ago, I quit when I was seventeen years old, a full thirty-five years before my diagnosis. Non-smoker lung cancer cases are on the rise from environmental factors such as longtime exposure to radon, which is now the second biggest reason (behind smoking) that people get lung cancer. Neither of these was why I got it. My lung cancer was a genetic alteration. So, asking me smoking related questions is really shitty and ignorant, and if I spit at you remember you asked for it. Don’t do it to anyone, because you really don’t know the reason. And even if the person in question got it from smoking, it’s pretty crappy to assume anyone deserves to have a disease because of a bad habit that is very hard to kick.

All women who get cancer want to be referred to as “warriors.” Nope. Wrong again. I feel like this myth is embedded deep in our culture, since my recent post about this very subject was hardly read or commented on, was even largely ignored by a faithful group of friends who regularly read and applaud my stuff. Yeah, it’s tough for someone to speak the truth and go against the grain of what the general population wants to believe. It’s just so interesting to envision a woman with cancer fighting with all she has and, sometimes, going down in a blaze of glory. Well let me further burst your bubble: there isn’t any glory in dying of cancer. I watched my sister perish from the same curse I’m stuck with now. And I’ll say it again, from my own personal experience: I’m not interested in being your warrior. All I’m interested in is being ME. And I know for sure that I’m not the only cancer survivor who feels this way.

“Big Pharma” is Withholding a Cure for Cancer. This makes me want to scream. Again and again, I notice something really interesting about this myth: the individuals who believe it don’t have cancer. They are experts at something they have never experienced firsthand. I have not heard anyone with cancer make this claim. Because we know that it’s nonsense. “Big Pharma” would make ten times more money curing cancer than they would withholding a cure for cancer. Think about it. I never believed this claim even before I was diagnosed, even from the outside not wanting to see inside. Now, from the inside looking out, I’m in even more disbelief that anyone could be so stupid as to believe it.

Only Unhealthy People Get Cancer. I was one of the healthiest people out there, always took care of myself, was in great shape, ate as well as I could, didn’t and don’t have any bad habits. It would seem that my vigilance didn’t work, but when looked at another way, one could easily say that the reason I’m still alive and kicking is because I was healthy to start with. In fact, when I asked my former oncologist why I “made it” when so many others don’t, he pointed to my lifestyle before cancer as one of the two biggest factors. (The other one is that I have continued to live my life similarly post-diagnosis.) When people claim that they are healthy and won’t get ill because they eat their vegetables and drink their green tea, I just smile, knowing the irony. Living a healthy existence can prepare you for if and when the worst happens to you, but it doesn’t always mean that the worst isn’t going to happen.

Stage IV Cancer is a Death Sentence. Walking around with the knowledge that you have cancer at the deadliest stage is hardly a picnic, but it isn’t necessarily a death sentence anymore. Targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and several other cutting edge treatments are working wonders for patients like yours truly and allowing us to not only live longer and live better, but to turn the tables on cancer, as well as the general perceptions surrounding it. For many of us, the days of suffering more from treatment than from the actual disease are in the past, and every day brings us closer and closer to a cure. I regularly have people tell me that if they didn’t know I have cancer they would never guess, because I look so healthy. I hope to keep it that way for the foreseeable future.

To further illustrate the mythological aspect of the final item, I’m heading to Ireland next week, and I hereby promise to write a nice post (with lots of pictures!) that has nothing to do with cancer when I get back! Until then, I hope you will ponder what is true and what isn’t when you think about this awful disease.