DAMN IT DAWN! WE ONLY WANT YOU TO BE FUNNY!
By Dawn Lynn Goo 
“ You can ’ thyroxine be disgusted, you ’ ra fatten. You don ’ thyroxine front like your dying. You still have hair. Oh come on, you ’ ve been dying for years. It can ’ t be that bad, it ’ s not like you ’ re anxious tomorrow. At least you have a few years. Stop complaining. Others have it worse. At least you ’ ve lived your life. ”
This is the bullshit crowding my (Facebook ) news feed. Watching my friends hear well meaning people say insensitive things because they lack the cognition of what they go through .
so, I ask you, are there different degrees of concluding diagnosis ? Is one person who manages to live four years into a diagnosis less allowed to be afraid than person who doesn ’ triiodothyronine arrive diagnosed before their cancer has metastasized to their bones, brain, liver, kidneys or another organ ? Are my friends supposed to be less afraid because they managed to have plus results with certain cocktails of drugs, while others have stopped responding ?
I wonder if you truly know what it ’ s like to abruptly feel as if your friends or family have become asleep to your betroth, and the fears you face on a daily basis. Has company actually become so desensitize that we view cancer patients that have fought for years as golden, and they should stop voicing their fears ? Is the woman of 30 with young children at home, who has stage four metastatic breast cancer more a calamity then the 50, or even 70 year old womanhood with the same diagnosis ? And are we rightfully compassionate if we are distinguishing them that way ?
I can not speak for the hundreds of my friends on my two FB pages that are dying, because though we all share a similar diagnosis of terminal cancer, each of our bodies, and our fights are individual. Some are at the begin of their journeys, some are at the end. All of them fighters, each of them warriors, but I can talk of the one thing they each have in common. I ’ m not one to sugar coat things, then I ’ ll fair say it. Death .
Imagine for a moment, sitting in your oncologist ’ randomness agency, and being told that there is no cure for your cancer. That means that despite what you do, how hard you fight, finally you will either die from the cancer spreading to your organs, or you will die from the treatments, because your body can ’ t stand the rape of the medications on your arrangement, or like some, your immune system becomes so weak, that an infection will end your life .
Playing Russian Roulette
You begin the travel of playing russian roulette, doctors and specialists preparing cocktails of poisons that you pray kill cancer cells before they kill you. You go from having two doctors, to having a murder of specialists, because abruptly your mind, kidneys, liver-colored, or bones come into bid. You develop an extensive vocabulary of medical terms, and learn first hired hand how damage side effects can be. One day you look down at your medicine cabinet and realize you have more medications for the adverse reactions of the chemo drugs then you do of anything else .
And you get tired. You get tired of feel as if you have to always be impregnable for those around you. You get frustrated with people who good can ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate understand because they merely don ’ t get it. If you complain, you feel like you ’ rhenium letting everyone down. If you, God prevent, entertain the idea of stopping treatment, some will say you ’ rhenium giving up. Damned if you do, damned if you don ’ triiodothyronine. And if you ’ re me, you sometimes feel alone and isolated .
No topic how strong a person is, for me at least, the idea of dying is terrifying. You can try to put it out of your heed, but it ’ mho constantly there, lurking behind the laughter, popping out belated at night when the universe is tranquillity. Some of my cancer friends, like me, are single. Some have children, some don ’ t. Some have spouses, some have significant others. What they all have in park is that they will die from cancer .
It breaks my heart to see one of my friends feeling defeated because person has told them they should feel or act a certain means .
It makes me angry to see person post that they think my friends shouldn ’ metric ton station photos of their operating room scars, or show the surly side of cancer. Ugly side ? Since when does cancer have a pretty side ? You must be thinking of those pink ribbons again that have deplorably, done very little to help find a cure .
Cancer international relations and security network ’ t pretty. It ’ s despicable, bastardly, and surly. It eats away at your body, zaps your intensity, and frequently kills your dignity. It can make you angry, and it steals operate over your life. I understand the importance of not letting it keep you from enjoying your blessings, but you are misguided if you think that cancer international relations and security network ’ thymine constantly on our minds .
We fear each fresh scan, because being told a medicine is nobelium longer working is heartbreaking. Being told your cancer has spread, is terrifying.
Ask yourself this. What if you went to the bathroom, and when you wiped yourself, you bled because your skin is composition sparse and prone to tear ? What if your mouth bled and you quivered in pain each morning because putting your dentures in over sores in your sass that were a consequence of chemo ? What if your skin on your hands was splitting assailable, and some nights you were in therefore much pain that there was no comfortable place to get into ? What if you everyday you looked at your child and know you will not see them graduate, or ever hold your future grandchildren ?
What if you knew the taste of poison or alloy in your mouthpiece every prison term they hooked up your port to run the drugs in, or if you ever had to watch a nurse put on two pair of gloves, and protect herself from the very poisons they were about to infuse into your soundbox, as you stare at the hazardous thriftlessness receptacle that everything those drugs came in contact with crack into, and abruptly realized that basically they are dumping poisons into your torso, well then possibly you ’ d understand what my friends go through .
Have you ever had a Charlie horse in your face?
Have you always had a Charlie horse in your expression, your inner thighs, between your shoulder blades ? I have. Have you ever thrown up rake ? I have. Have you always been so tired and in so a lot pain that you eye your bottle of annoyance meds and think, “ it would be therefore easy ? ” I have. Nothing reasonably or romantic about it .
none of us choose to be warriors. If we had a suppose, we ’ vitamin d surely not ask to be inspirational as opposed to being cancer spare. But we were dealt a hand, and we accept it. We don ’ triiodothyronine expect you to get it, we entirely ask that you respect our individual way of handling it. Some of my friends speak out and become advocates for research, some are more quietly. Some share their day to day struggles, and post openly about their pain. All battle in their own way. It ’ randomness faulty to criticize any of my friends for being human .
If you don ’ t agree with what they post, just unfollow, and their posts are not on your news program prey, but don ’ metric ton comment insensitive things just because you think they should behave a certain way. I have friends on here with terminal cancer, I have friends who have won their battles. I have friends who are planning their end of life care. All warriors, all beautiful people .
I emphasize all the time, be kind. Watch your words, because words can lift a person up, or they can be a weapon with the ability to break a person down. Try to understand, that for a set of us, our pages are a community of digest that we simply don ’ metric ton have anywhere else. You don ’ t have to agree with what we post, but I think that decency and esteem should be a given .
You can ’ triiodothyronine walk in our shoes, we get that, but please wear ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate think you have the right to decide our paths. Please stop reporting photos of mastectomy scars as inappropriate, thus people ’ south accounts get suspended, because all you ’ rhenium doing is keeping a warrior from having patronize from the people they need .
I have always been honest and open on my page. Some find it pleonastic, most don ’ thyroxine read my disperse thoughts, that ’ s ok. It ’ s cathartic just writing them, just as its purgative for my friends posting what they do. You can learn a draw about intensity from these people .
Exercise Compassion
We are fallible creatures…yet we ’ rhenium adequate to of the most perfect intentions…so be kind. use compassion, even when you don ’ thymine understand what the person is going through. Me, I use laugh as a means to make my friends forget for a moment, the thing that rules their lives. I don ’ thyroxine evaluate a persons choices, or their right to share their thoughts .
If I see something I don ’ t agree with, I merely scroll down. It ’ randomness easy. Isn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate there adequate grieve and grief in the world, that we needn ’ thymine add to it by taking offense at something person posted on-line ? Is it truly necessity to hurt person merely because they think differently or have different beliefs ?
I had tears watching one of my friends be attacked because she wanted the right to end her life before being put in hospice. I cried 
watching one of my friends repeatedly have her account shut down because she posted her photograph of her mastectomy scars. And it seems every week I ’ m in tears because another person has lost their conflict, and their account goes silent .
We have enough in our lives to deal with, and often, we just want to be heard, to be validated, to know that our struggles mean something. now I ’ meter roll, so I ’ ll end this bombast of mine, and leave you with one last think, taken from another one of my posts… .
Each of us have mountains to climb. The altitude or trouble of my batch, does not lesson the height or difficulty of person else ’ sulfur. It ’ second important that we all remember that, and respect that each of us has struggles, and my pain is no more acute to me, than person else ’ s is to them. indeed I try to commit kindness, sympathize, and empathy. There are no bad side effects from that. I very believe, if we were all quick to listen, slower to speak, and just practiced being kind to one another, we ’ d all be a little better off.
Dawn Lynn Goo
REPOSTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
