Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level... Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Cancer is too real, and too awful, and I can't make it good or magical. I couldn't even read a book where a character had cancer, for a while... But now I've reached a point where I don't think about cancer nonstop anymore, and sometimes I worry about that - I'm going to forget what I went through; I'm going to forget how horrible it was.
I wish I could never spend another second talking about cancer and all it does to everyone it surrounds, but unfortunately, that cannot be because of my life.
When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.
Each of us knows a few or several young people whose lives have been devastated by cancer. I don't mean to be nihilistic about it, but it is very much an active killer of people now.
Cancer is a scary thing and you have to deal with it seriously.
You hear the word 'cancer,' it scares you. You think of death.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Even the word 'cancer' brings back the nausea and pain, the fear I felt, and the heartbreak I saw in my parents' faces. The smells that fill hospitals and the constant tired feeling that comes with treatment are also permanently stuck in my memory.
That thing of briefly losing sight of a child happened to me when the kids were younger, and you can't see them in the supermarket or wherever. It's a terrible, terrible moment... the most unimaginable horror.
Cancer affects all of us, whether you're a daughter, mother, sister, friend, coworker, doctor, patient.
I've kind of got an out in cancer. It keeps things in perspective for me.