Cancer

A few weeks back, I wrote about my relative callous towards breast cancer awareness at Midwest Parents. About how easy it was to look at pink stuff in the store and buy a pink piece of jewelry or a pink silicone mixing bowl and feel good about myself even though I hadn't done anything to really become more "aware" of breast cancer. Or to help people who are suffering. Or to stop and think at all.

My sister-in-law goes in for a second biopsy today. First biopsy showed breast cancer. I'm not even sure why they're doing a second instead of just starting treatment immediately. She's 45.

She's always been the one who worked like a horse, the one who took care of everyone else, the one who told her sisters they were whiners when they felt ill. She's the one who never gave up. From what I hear, she's scared for the first time in her life.

And I'm scared. It started when I was about 35 or so. My friends, my young friends, started getting cancer. Cervical, breast, colon, lung, you name it. In their thirties. What is going on? When did it become the case that everyone gets cancer? I used to think the question about getting married for life was whether the relationship would last; today I'm wondering what the chances are that neither person will battle cancer. And maybe lose.

I know I'm late to the game on this one. Bubblewench wrote last year about her husband getting testicular cancer. And suddenly she questioned whether they really were sure about never wanting kids. I'm sure there are others out there that I'm not even remembering right now. Even when I wrote that post a few weeks ago about not being touched by breast cancer, a flood of people started filling my mind:

- a cousin, 70, just lost his four-year battle the week before I wrote that post
- a good friend's husband, 38, just had surgery for colon cancer that metastasised to his lung. They have an 8-year-old daughter. Chemo starts again this week.
- Grace's grandmother, 60-something, had breast cancer when she was in her early 40s. So has every other woman in her family (her mother, three aunts, one niece). One didn't make it. Now she has stage 4 lung cancer that's metastasised to her brain.
- A distant family member, early 30s, just had a double mastectomy because her mother died of breast cancer and she learned she had the same marker on her DNA.
- Another distant family member (my sister's mother-in-law) has been on death's door for about a year due to some unusual strain of cancer attacking her vital organs.

And now my sister-in-law who I just stayed with for a month. The one who teased me because I was so sick and had to go to the ER.

I don't think it's that I'm unaware; it's that I'm desensitized.