I need a slap, because I seem to be refusing to snap out of whatever big fat crank I’m in at the moment – really losing patience with myself because small problems are being unduly magnified and I’m getting tetchy with my best people. Fucking hate that . . . I think part of the problem is that I see no prospect of rest or change in front of me. And this weekend is already trés chargée, trop chargée, and with things I can’t or simply won’t drop. Especially after the Scissor Sisters cancellation, I need to Shake a Tail.
Of course there are other things preying on my mood, rather more serious. Cancer is one of them. Another friend has been diagnosed with it – no sooner is Carmen fully out of the woods than Miss B. tells me she’s about to start a course of radiotherapy after having gone through the chemo and the boob surgery. I hope everything goes as well for Miss B. as it did for Carmen. In both cases I blame France for their illness.
This also comes hot on the heels of news a much older friend of my family has decided to stop treatment for ovarian cancer – she’s in her late seventies and I suppose the physical toll the treatment wreaks is insupportable to her now, despite her prior good health. Cancer was also a contributing factor to my grandfather’s death – he was diagnosed with a couple different kinds earlier this year that had probably been present in his system for three or four years, but progressed so slowly because of his mighty age.
So cancer is something I’m thinking about a lot. Not so much cancer as a disease, but how people react to it, treat it, try to prevent it . . . it risks becoming a fixed idea. There’s something really barbaric about how cancer is treated. Like old military medicine or something, or the way they treated crazies when everyone was excited about electrocuting each other. I guess part of the puzzle comes in asking what my older friend’s ovaries have in common with Miss B’s young tits – seems to have nothing more in common than HIV and HPV do, so why is the treatment so very similar and why – more importantly from a layperson’s point of view – do we have the same sort of emotional reactions to hearing the name of their disease?
Yeah, so, weeeeeeeeeee! I’m in a pisser.
12 commenti:
Sorry to hear about the cancer phenomenon. I've deluded myself into thinking that if I eat mostly unprocessed, organic food and don't dye my hair or use nasty chemicals on my body or in my body that I can avoid the disease. There are so many things that cause cancer and so many types... it really is depressing. I believe that my grandmother died of breast cancer but no one talked about such feminine issues then - it was only recently that I learned that her cancer was not from smokers.
Your family friend is brave to decide to stop fighting.
She was always a particularly brave woman.
Anyways, cancer is cancer and some big general mystery which I'm starting to suspect is a bunch of things all lumped together, the way consumption used to be, and that makes it seem even scarier than it is.
I suppose all we can do, while so much of the treatment is just pissing in the dark and choppy-chop-fry, is try to keep generally healthy so we have the strength to cope with both the disease and the cure if we're one of the unlucky people to get it. Like anything else.
I too, am sorry to hear about the cancer overload in your life right now.
I used to think that it was some modern phenomenon and, to some extent, there is an increase related to the polluting of our planet...but I think it's always been here and lots of times there just wasn't a name for it.
Here's the slap you asked for - slap slap!
We are enjoying some bevs at my new house before shaking tails.
Thanks, Mel!
I'll probably be there, Cali, with Figaro and my old roommate from Italy - Mr. N just sent me your new details.
Great - I'll get some cheese.
It will be nice to see Figaro again.
Cool - I'll bring your man's birthday present too, though I know he'll be out conferencing.
Cancer has been around. It's more common now because there are fewer other things to kill us first. Maybe it's a weakness of our bodies, and if given enough time, everyone will get it.
I hope that everything works out well for your friend.
There are increasingly more cases of cancer among young people so I don't think it is a case of us just living long enough to get it or not contracting any other diseases before we get it. I think it has a lot to do with the pollutants that we are exposed to on a daily basis. Of course there are so many kinds of cancer and there are also just as many causes. I found your comment on the way it is treated interesting, Mistress. You're right. We are treating this disease in such a barbaric fashion.
I hope you shook your tail good last night.
Sugar, the economic imperatives of Western medicine are undeniably such that a condition is treated rather than cured whenever possible - and then when any kind of cancer comes along and non-cures are no longer practical, the medicine is brutal, literally eviscerating. What the hell do I know, sure, but cancer patients are gutted, fried, and treated like the walking dead . . .
I think I do agree with Jiri it's been around forever though. Whether the pollutants in our ambience is raising the rate I'm not sure, but it does seem like a very blanket term for a weakness in our bodies we might all get one day - of course, if that is the case, preventative medicine and lifestyles should be getting even more attention than they do.
I totally believe that cancer is more common among young people today due to the pollutants around us. And we've probably not seen the worst of it. What are things like the herbicides that turn male frogs into hermaphrodites going to do to us? Maybe it won't even be some sort of a cancer, but something else that we had not imagined yet.
As for western medicine, it is barbaric in the way it approaches cancer, but it is difficult to separate the part of yourself that turned agaist you from the rest of yourself. The treatment is no doubt brutal in a way that I cannot imagine, but the fact that we can treat some sorts of cancer and cure some of the people is praiseworthy. The preventative medicine that Mistress La Spliffe mentions is a different story.
Apparently thyroid cancer in young women and testicular cancer in young men have both risen +100% in the last decade or so. There is definitely a correlation between our environment and playing around with hormones etc.
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