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Do we scaremonger when it comes to cancer?

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    #62
    SlowBlowin
    Registered Users Posts: 1,884 ✭✭✭SlowBlowin


    BDI wrote: »
    I have and I would have felt equally as bad if they had any other ailment. Motor neuron disease, now that one was rough.

    I am sorry to hear that.

    This thread is specifically about cancer and is it over hyped. Given how common its is, compared to other horrible fates like MND, I believe its first or second on the top of the list.

    If everyone lived their life with no consideration to health risks, we would all be in the pub drinking, eating Haribo, and smoking fags, well I would anyway, then the chipper etc etc.

    I think its sensible to consider the risks in life, and then prioritise them, and I know from personal experience that cancer is probably the biggest risk I face. Therefore I live life to full, while considering the risks and strike a balance.

    I understand your, I would rather burn out than fade away, stance but its one I would not follow, time becomes more precious as you get older..


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    #63
    metaoblivia
    Registered Users Posts: 2,256 ✭✭✭metaoblivia


    Maybe, but I think it's good that people are more aware and are generally doing more now to catch it at an earlier stage. I've been lucky in that cancer has not affected my own family, but I have a friend who's just 31 who was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer last spring. She went through radiation/chemo and for a few months this fall it looked like things were going well. But unfortunately they found more cancer last week and have said it isn't curable. She's an only child, and I just can't even begin to imagine being in her or her parents shoes.

    Even if your chances of getting cancer are low in the scheme of things, when you see people who are so young receive devastating diagnoses like that, it may cross your mind to double check, just in case. There are times when cancer can be relatively straightforward to treat, and then times when it's just absolutely devastating. If catching it early stops it from becoming the latter, why not do what you can to give yourself the best outcome.


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    #64
    Ms2011
    Registered Users Posts: 3,120 ✭✭✭Ms2011


    I lost my mother to breast cancer, she was just 39 & I was 2.
    I lost my SIL in June to lung cancer, she was a non-smoker, she was only 52 and fought hard for 6 years.
    If anything I've learned that cancer doesn't care if you are young, lived a healthy lifestyle, or have young children depending on you, it is cruel & doesn't discriminate, don't know if that is scaremongering or not but that has been my experience of this disease.


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    #65
    retro:electro
    Registered Users Posts: 21,039 ✭✭✭✭retro:electro


    I don’t even have the heart to reply to this thread properly and can’t bring myself to read some of the replies. I’ve just been through the worst year of my life where I watched my mother, the love of my life, slowly succumb to this horrific disease.
    Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It can literally arrive at anyone’s doorstep; rich or poor. And it doesn’t care if you’ve already been though enough and can’t handle it. I think scaremongering is the wrong word, it’s more about being realistic when you have absolutely no idea or way of predetermining if you or someone you love will get it in the future.
    It’s a beast of a disease.


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    #66
    SlowBlowin
    Registered Users Posts: 1,884 ✭✭✭SlowBlowin


    retro:electro wrote: »
    I don’t even have the heart to reply to this thread properly and can’t bring myself to read some of the replies. I’ve just been through the worst year of my life where I watched my mother, the love of my life, slowly succumb to this horrific disease.
    Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It can literally arrive at anyone’s doorstep; rich or poor. And it doesn’t care if you’ve already been though enough and can’t handle it. I think scaremongering is the wrong word, it’s more about being realistic when you have absolutely no idea or way of predetermining if you or someone you love will get it in the future.
    It’s a beast of a disease.

    I feel so sorry for you, its such a shock to experience.


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    #67
    _Brian
    Registered Users Posts: 18,489 ✭✭✭✭_Brian


    My MIL went from being fine to funeral in 28days.

    She was active, self sufficient, driving her car, bingo, bowls, plenty of mass, walking with friends.

    Felt a bit unwell so went to GP

    Aggressive Ovarian Cancer.

    Buried 28 days later.

    Was a terrible time.

    I’d left home at 17, my MIL lived with myself and my wife and I’d actually lived almost as long with her as I had with my own mum.



    One of my best friends died from brain tumours last year. He’s battled for 16 years and made it to 51. 5 days before he passed away he asked a few of us to meet him and it was the toughest thing I had to do. Last thing he said was not to be sad for him, it was his time and he had no fight left. I still see his number in my phone and can’t beleive he lost his battle.


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    #68
    branie2
    Registered Users Posts: 10,295 ✭✭✭✭branie2


    I don't think so


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    #69
    Gynoid
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,524 ✭✭✭Gynoid


    Cancer is horrible and it is scary. It would break your heart the stories on here and most of us have lost someone dear to us in a horrible way. It makes life both tragic and precious.

    Can I just put in a word or two in defense of the apparently cruel fatalists - for some people fatalism is an antidote to anxiety or existential angst. A valid one, dare I say. The stoics, and the Buddhists with their fixation on impermanence, are quite fatalistic in their philosophies - it can seem cruel, it is not for everyone (I don't like it all that much being of an emotional bent myself) but it is a valid metaphysical viewpoint. Turning ''what if' into ''so what''.
    It is not a cruel and dreadful way of coping, because I am sure that most of those people on here who have talked about ''sure everyone dies, buses, etc.'', would weep with the same agonised and broken hearts for someone they love.

    Peole have different ways of living, coping. Of expressing. Of believing. People have to accept that. It is hard. For example I do not like the fatalistic attiutude towards death personally, but I can see its validity for some. I also find abortion repugnant but I can see how others might need it, so if a friend told me she had had one I would love her just the same. I am not in favour of euthanasia but when my sick and terribly suffering father begged me over and over for months to find some way to kill him I could understand with every fibre of my being the unbearable horror of the ground he stood on.
    Life is complex.


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