Talk Cancer

Question:

Ginnie wrote a message about a special that’ll be on TV on Sunday March 10 narrated by Robert DeNiro that’s supposed to have footage shot underground at the World Trade Center, on CBS.  I checked the listings, and it’s supposed to be a special called "9/11" on CBS Sunday evening, March 10, at 8 pm Central (that would be 9 pm Eastern & everybody else will just have to do their own math!). It is sort of morbid, isn’t it, that there is something in human nature that we can’t turn away from watching a train wreck or anything like that.  I think it’s partly so that we can at least feel like, ok, I know the worst that can happen now.  Sort of like, let’s face the worst and know what it is, and get that fear of the unknown over with. I remember when I was a kid on a vacation with my parents & my brother.  I was riding in the back seat of the car with my mom (who had lost her official post as family map-reader & navigator to my brother, who then moved to the front passenger seat, after my mom had accidentally directed us across the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana–22 miles, no stopping, no place to turn around).  We came upon a car accident and everybody was rubbernecking wanting to see what happened.  I wanted to see too, and she held me down with my face in her lap and wouldn’t let me look.  I think actually it might have been better to just let me look.  You wouldn’t believe the gory images I imagined that there must have been there — complete with decapitations & body parts & blood, etc.  Probably my imagination was much worse than the real thing. I think we also have a human tendency to try to examine terrible tragedies that befall other people, to see if there is a lesson to be learned about how to avoid their fate for ourselves, or to reassure ourselves that it wouldn’t have happened to us because we would have done something differently, just to ease our own anxiety about it.  Often those reassurances we give ourselves are not very reality-based, but I think we do it anyway. So I totally understand Ginnie’s comment about not knowing why she would want to watch something so horrible, but I plan to watch it too. Peace to us all. Love, Rosemary

Response:

Thanks, Rosemary! Children can conjure up some pretty bad images, without having seen something awful. Example: the daughter of family friends died when I was about 6. My folks drove us 3 or 4 hours, in our "Sunday" dresses, to the distant city, with me asking "how/why did she die?", "what’s leukemia?", "what will she look like in the casket?…" And I got NO answers. Not one. My mother and sister were Christian Scientists, who don’t discuss anything medical and/or mortal. Dad wasn’t a CS, but he knew better than to volunteer any answers on those topics. My curiosity was overwhelming, by the time we got there. BUT… Mom and Dad made my sister and I stay outside in the car the whole time. So I pelted HER with all those questions, and without the parents around, she said a few things that just freaked me right out. To this day, I can’t handle funerals or viewings or wakes, and had nightmares about what my sister had described in the car, even though she turned out to be bullshitting me totally. ‘Nuther example: Mom refused, per her CS religion, to have me inoculated for polio; but every kid in my school got vaccinated. During a visit w/ my aunt + uncle, my aunt took my cousins for their shots. Mom and I went with them to the appointment, me in the back seat with my cousin telling me gory polio stories about paralyzed bodies with arms and legs as stiff as a stick, with a description of an iron lung that made it sound like a riveted armada… you get the picture. Like at the girl’s funeral above, I had to stay in the car, where my newly inoculated cousin teased me all the way home, about how *I* was gonna get polio because I wasn’t inoculated. My mom and aunt heard every word, and did nothing. I had nightmares for YEARS of stick figures and iron lungs floating all around me! It was years later that I discovered that Mom’s older sister HAD polio as a girl!! And even after all the agony that my aunt went through, Mom refused to vaccinate me! One of a series Ginnie – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Ginnie wrote a message about a special that’ll be on TV on Sunday March 10 narrated by Robert DeNiro that’s supposed to have footage shot underground at the World Trade Center, on CBS.  I checked the listings, and it’s supposed to be a special called "9/11" on CBS Sunday evening, March 10, at 8 pm Central (that would be 9 pm Eastern & everybody else will just have to do their own math!). It is sort of morbid, isn’t it, that there is something in human nature that we can’t turn away from watching a train wreck or anything like that.  I think it’s partly so that we can at least feel like, ok, I know the worst that can happen now.  Sort of like, let’s face the worst and know what it is, and get that fear of the unknown over with. I remember when I was a kid on a vacation with my parents & my brother.  I was riding in the back seat of the car with my mom (who had lost her official post as family map-reader & navigator to my brother, who then moved to the front passenger seat, after my mom had accidentally directed us across the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana–22 miles, no stopping, no place to turn around).  We came upon a car accident and everybody was rubbernecking wanting to see what happened.  I wanted to see too, and she held me down with my face in her lap and wouldn’t let me look.  I think actually it might have been better to just let me look.  You wouldn’t believe the gory images I imagined that there must have been there — complete with decapitations & body parts & blood, etc.  Probably my imagination was much worse than the real thing. I think we also have a human tendency to try to examine terrible tragedies that befall other people, to see if there is a lesson to be learned about how to avoid their fate for ourselves, or to reassure ourselves that it wouldn’t have happened to us because we would have done something differently, just to ease our own anxiety about it.  Often those reassurances we give ourselves are not very reality-based, but I think we do it anyway. So I totally understand Ginnie’s comment about not knowing why she would want to watch something so horrible, but I plan to watch it too. Peace to us all. Love, Rosemary

Response:

Wow, Ginnie! It’s always good to know you aren’t the only one, isn’t it. And here I thought I was the only one whose family history includes mental scars from lack of vaccination!  My mother told me a story about our family that my sisters & I, when trying to piece it together, are not sure makes sense with everything we’ve heard before, and my mom’s past the point of memory and lucidity to be able to verify anything now, but here’s what she told me: Her father was terrified of needles.  When it came time for the school-age children (my mother was the youngest of 5 kids) to be vaccinated for smallpox, he refused to give permission for that, but it was not for religious reasons. My mother was still little when that happened.  Her sister Mary subsequently died at age 13 or so of illness (here’s where our historical facts become less clear) due to either smallpox or polio.  At any rate, whatever the cause of her illness and death, my mother, the baby of the family at the age of 4 or so then, became the world’s most overprotected child due to her parents’ guilt feelings (which wouldn’t make much sense if what she died of was not what the vaccination was for, but there you go). My mother’s mother used to call her 3 or 4 times per day every single day, on up through adulthood, which contributed in no small part to my mother’s mental illness and depression and inability to see herself as an independent functioning adult who should and could be taking care of herself (and her children) and not need to be taken care of by others. My mom’s mental illness led to her hospitalization for some extended periods of time for depression while I was a baby (along with postpartum depression probably).  Which has led to my own problems that I have spent many years in therapy for — I still cry easily over abandoned kids, etc., to the point of absurdity sometimes — I was TRULY upset when they separated the baby panda Hua Mei from her mom Bai Yun at the San Diego Zoo.  I read a book "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd the other day and I really bawled through about the last 150 pages of it, I think. We all have our own scars, and our own brand of dysfunctional family.  There are lots of families, too, where there is a lack of critical information being discussed within the family, but gosh, Ginnie, I can’t imagine not being able to ask about ANYTHING medical (or at least never getting any answers — sounds like you did the asking!). Best wishes to us all. Rosemary

Response:

It’s truly ironic that I was raised by a Christian Scientist and had just about zero health information about my family’s health histories, or my own for that matter. My sister and I were born at home out of mom’s choice, and I turned blue half an hour afterwards. No effort on their part to find out why. Maybe that was a clue to the severe sleep apnea that I have, and that my Dad had. Mom argued all summer with every school official and every school board member, trying to get me out of the standard vaccinations that everyone has before kindergarten. For months, all I heard was her trying to "protect" me from "shots." I was five – "what’s a shot?" To me, shots were some monster that made it out from under my bed! When she finally lost the fight, the night before school started, she hung up the phone, grabbed me by the hand, and hauled me kicking and screaming – seriously kicking and screaming; I left tracks!) down the block to the doctor’s house. He was kind and sweet, but I bawled buckets and wouldn’t look at what he was doing, I just sat in a dining room chair bawling at a picture on the wall. Pretty soon, he taps me on the shoulder and says "We’re done." Huh?? Nothing happened! No monster ate me, no one hurt me….  what was all the damn fuss about shots??? That was my first foray into weird medical "stuff" with my mom. The next was when I was 10 and wanted to go to girl scout camp… my whole troop was going, and I let her know I had to have some simple exam at a doctor. We fought for 3 straight years about the "physical", until I finally wore her down and got to camp at age 13. Et cetera, et cetera. Isn’t it odd that for as much as she kept me from medical attention, I’ve needed a slew of it in my lifetime? But I can say today that I’m in reasonably good health compared to my sister, who maintained her Christian Scientist religion until she nearly went blind. So now she’s compromising, I guess. I haven’t spoken to her in 10 years, because it took me 20 years and 2 shrinks to get over all the "issues", crap, and anger my family visited on me. Believe me, if any one of us has anyone in their life who doesn’t respect your choice to see doctors, who doesn’t take you seriously when you say you’re in pain, let them go. Good health and well-being do get influenced by those around us. Make sure your near and dear or family members aren’t making your problems worse. Ginnie – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Wow, Ginnie! It’s always good to know you aren’t the only one, isn’t it. And here I thought I was the only one whose family history includes mental scars from lack of vaccination!  My mother told me a story about our family that my sisters & I, when trying to piece it together, are not sure makes sense with everything we’ve heard before, and my mom’s past the point of memory and lucidity to be able to verify anything now, but here’s what she told me: Her father was terrified of needles.  When it came time for the school-age children (my mother was the youngest of 5 kids) to be vaccinated for smallpox, he refused to give permission for that, but it was not for religious reasons. My mother was still little when that happened.  Her sister Mary subsequently died at age 13 or so of illness (here’s where our historical facts become less clear) due to either smallpox or polio.  At any rate, whatever the cause of her illness and death, my mother, the baby of the family at the age of 4 or so then, became the world’s most overprotected child due to her parents’ guilt feelings (which wouldn’t make much sense if what she died of was not what the vaccination was for, but there you go). My mother’s mother used to call her 3 or 4 times per day every single day, on up through adulthood, which contributed in no small part to my mother’s mental illness and depression and inability to see herself as an independent functioning adult who should and could be taking care of herself (and her children) and not need to be taken care of by others. My mom’s mental illness led to her hospitalization for some extended periods of time for depression while I was a baby (along with postpartum depression probably).  Which has led to my own problems that I have spent many years in therapy for — I still cry easily over abandoned kids, etc., to the point of absurdity sometimes — I was TRULY upset when they separated the baby panda Hua Mei from her mom Bai Yun at the San Diego Zoo.  I read a book "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd the other day and I really bawled through about the last 150 pages of it, I think. We all have our own scars, and our own brand of dysfunctional family.  There are lots of families, too, where there is a lack of critical information being discussed within the family, but gosh, Ginnie, I can’t imagine not being able to ask about ANYTHING medical (or at least never getting any answers — sounds like you did the asking!). Best wishes to us all. Rosemary

Response: