I vividly remember taking my dear friend Trish to her first appointment at the Austin to see an expert on the particular lung cancer she had. She was so stressed out I did most of her admission stuff and that was the first time I ever realised that shame could come into the cancer equation. The fat bitch behind the desk (sorry, but no other description is adequate) sneered, stared at my distressed mate and said "I suppose she's a smoker." I flipped my lid. How dare someone who was quite obviously making appalling health choices in their own life dismiss someone else as 'deserving what they got'. I would not normally make a derogatory comment about someone else's body, but the combination of hypocrisy and nastiness was just breathtaking.
Trish died on October 5th 2011. The way she was treated by some people both inside and outside the health services because she had a 'dirty' disease that was easily dismissed as being her own fault still burns me.
Dialog about what causes breast cancer or contributes to your risk of getting it--being overweight, a smoker, alcohol, eating meat, being on the pill or not breast feeding for example--might possibly help someone avoid the disease, though I seriously doubt that. What those discussions definitely can do is give the righteous a stick to probe the cause of our misery. Are we responsible for our own condition? Should we have been more virtuous? Abstained from the sort of behaviour that may have caused the whole mess? I think that's where the shame comes in; is the disease evidence of our inadequacy and poor decision making? Could we have done better, done more to avoid it?
Sorry for the rant, but this stuff sends me mental.
