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Leukemia Has Won

alex.blog

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Re: Leukemia Has Won

#91

Post by m1n1 »

sundvor wrote: post #62
stickfigure wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to add one other important (free!) way you can help: Sign up to be a marrow donor. In the US, here: https://bethematch.org Alex mentioned graft-vs-host disease. When you get a marrow transplant, the better the match, the more likely you are to survive. The bigger the database, the better chance of a good match. Seven years ago I lost a good friend to non-hodgkin's lymphoma. Cancer sucks.

Signed up over a decade ago with Australian Red Cross blood service. Haven't heard anything but it's good knowing that if the call ever comes, I personally might save someone's life. (Donating O- helps in a more general way.)

Haven't heard anything? You should be getting regular pings as they make sure they can reach you annually or more frequently.

Re: Leukemia Has Won

#92

Post by nicklaf »

jrobn wrote: post #65
moises_silva wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Death comes for us all, sooner or later, one way or another. That's one of the few truisms in life. I'm genuinely making an effort to understand how this is relevant to someone with a cancer diagnosis. Sure, dead comes sooner or later, and that's the whole point of why one would feel it sucks and that we're losing, because often cancer means for you, dead came way too early. I have not known anyone with cancer, but…

Death is the ultimate joke. We spend so much time worrying about it. Avoiding it. Writing poetry and books about it. Maybe, If your a Religious being, even shaping our entire life around it because of the “ultimate judgement” in the end. Death is a construction to make sense of our physical reality.

Death is a construction to make sense of our physical reality.

That's certainly true from an evolutionary point of view.

Re: Leukemia Has Won

#93

Post by DoreenMichele »

TomMarius wrote: post #81
ljm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes cancer an identity, and the cancer status subsumes their life as well as their body. Everything is about the cancer and how they deal with it.

Doesn't that simply reflect their life and thoughts?

I think I kind of get the criticism.

When you are told by a doctor that you have a thing and it's a very deadly thing, the psychological component -- for both you and everyone you deal with -- is huge. The specter of death and the battle with it can blot out the sun, so to speak.

My experiences suggest that wresting your identity away from this pattern of thought is life giving and helps people survive in very practical terms.

It's not voodoo magic. It strongly influences the mental models that drive your decision-making process.

When people believe death is inevitable, they tend to make choices that help that become a self-fulfilling prophecy because they believe nothing they do will really matter anyway.

Re: Leukemia Has Won

#95

Post by ljm »

TomMarius wrote: post #81
ljm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes cancer an identity, and the cancer status subsumes their life as well as their body. Everything is about the cancer and how they deal with it.

Doesn't that simply reflect their life and thoughts?

How would you know what part of their life and their thoughts it reflects?

What if they don't give a shit about the illness but everybody else makes the biggest deal of it?

Re: Leukemia Has Won

#97

Post by oh_sigh »

darod wrote: post #59

From someone who's been dealing with cancer for the last 6 years, I hate when people compare it to a fight/war/battle with winners and losers. What exactly am I fighting? My cells? How exactly am I going to war? by sitting in a chair eating a sandwich while getting a chemo infusion? In my mind, this was always just a disease to manage. Being diagnosed at 33 with no family history or no genetic markers the only thing…

What were your symptoms? How were you originally diagnosed?

Re: Leukemia Has Won

#98

Post by modzu »

to friends and family of loved ones in similar situations -- dont hesitate to say anything you need to say to them. dont live with regrets. and to friends and family of their caregivers, dont underestimate how hard this is for them too. they will need your care just as much.

Re: Leukemia Has Won

#99

Post by LordHumungous »

joshgel wrote: post #15

As a human it makes me so sad to read this post. I hope the rest of his life is meaningful, comfortable and pain-free. As a doctor it makes me so mad. We talk about winning and losing against cancer like its some game or some foe personified. Just because there aren't any more chemo therapy options doesn't mean there aren't treatment options. Just because he'll be home and not in the hospital doesn't mean his doctors…

That's your way of looking at it, other people have a different way. When you are on your death bed you can write about your own thoughts on the matter.

Re: Leukemia Has Won

#100

Post by LordHumungous »

moises_silva wrote: post #40
DoreenMichele wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a terrific book called "Tell them who I am." It was written, I think, in the last year of the life of a man dying of cancer. He wanted to spend his final days doing something meaningful. It's about the lives and identities of homeless women at shelters where he volunteered. I am sympathetic to your rage. I wish I knew how to help such people. But I don't. Death comes for us all, sooner or later, one way or an…

> Death comes for us all, sooner or later, one way or another. That's one of the few truisms in life. I'm genuinely making an effort to understand how this is relevant to someone with a cancer diagnosis. Sure, dead comes sooner or later, and that's the whole point of why one would feel it sucks and that we're losing, because often cancer means for you, dead came way too early. I have not known anyone with cancer, but…

It's relevant to anyone who's facing their own death, which is all of us. Knowing that everyone goes through the same thing is comforting.
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