I Did Not Create Cancer

I want to share my heart with my friends. I tend to be a reserved person and tend not to broadcast my troubles. However, I have learned that when a friend of mine is engaged in a life and death struggle, I want to know.



As one friend observed knowing allows you to be your best self. She had an overly (IMHO) private friend who did not share the news of their illness with friends and shocked them by dying suddenly.



My aunt died of cancer. While walking to the church for her memorial service my uncle was proudly explaining that during her last months they had not let friends know how ill she way. He explained that they did not want to be pitied.


I was stunned. Reflecting on it I could see that it was a pattern in her life. She had refused to share other important troubles in her life. Some with good reason since they were socially difficult. It did not mean that her friends and community did not know generally about those troubles, just that it was a forbidden topic of conversation.

Hopefully we are moving to a point where no one should be ashamed of having cancer. Yes there are books claiming you can prevent cancer. However, it is not that simple. Some of us are genetically set up to have one or more types of cancer. We can try to live healthy, limit exposure to carcinogens, and try for the best health care possible. We can not control everything.



I was born and lived in both Chicago and the petrochemical gulf coast before the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act helped reduce carcinogens in our air and water. I have lived as healthy a life as I could while still driving cars, gassing them up, eating in restaurants with friends, living and working in building with modern carpets and plastics. I have even had a few friends who smoked.


I did not do anything wrong.


I did not create cancer in my life.


I am not ashamed that cancer has taken the center stage of my life.



Perhaps aggressively applying for a spot in tamoxifen studies would have helped? I don't know. I know that I can not time travel to change my family tree. There are lots of relatives in both of my parents families that died of cancer. Both grandfathers did. My father's father died of stomach cancer in about 1928. My maternal grandfather died of bone cancer when he was 62 in 1939. And that's just two of the relatives that died of cancer.



Knowing the type of environmental exposure I have had, its likely a miracle that I did not have some kind of cancer earlier.