All that cancer we're gonna get from that lousy radiation?

[aquart]

My stepmother, Rose Bassis, went to Nagasaki as a 20-something tourist (worked for the Red Cross) in 1946. Toured the whole city. Took pictures. Put 'em in an album. Came home. Got thyroid cancer. Didn't kill her.

Then it was stomach cancer. Supposed to kill her. Didn't. Got her finally with breast cancer IN HER 70s. She fought cancer for fifty years and it didn't get her till she was weak and old.

Think she spent that fifty years in bed? I don't think there was an inch of this earth she didn't see first hand. I know because I had to pack all of it after she died. All the souvenirs, all the photos and slides. That's when I found the album and realized where it all started. Silly kids had no idea they were killing themselves on that tour.

Nagasaki in 1946.

And they treated her with the old methods. We've gone past them.

Keep Rose Bassis in mind while you're being scared out of yours.

[dkf]

1. Dying of cancer is still the pits.

Gimme a nice fast heart attack.

[aquart]

2. Although, after he had one, my father beckoned me to his side.

This is what he whispered in my ear: "Never have a heart attack. It hurts."

[Lucinda]

LOL

Cancer wasn't any fun either. :hi:
She sounds amazing btw.

[readmoreoften]

4. I bet it does. Not looking forward to that whole dying thing.

[Lucinda]

6. I've come very very close three times already.

It does make you appreciate the here and now a lot more...but I was pretty good about that BEFORE I got sick. :)

[aquart]

12. Me, either. I eat lots of fatty foods.

I'm hoping for the lethal stroke my grandmother had. You know, where you go so fast you don't have time to put the plate on the table or turn the faucets off in the tub (which is how a neighbor went).

[readmoreoften]

3. Wait, so I'm supposed to be okay with getting thyroid and stomach cancer?

Just because I can beat it? My partner had thyroid cancer at 13. She beat it, but not before having to take a year out of school and pissing shit for months. Did your stepmother also have old-timey health care? What about us who don't have it or who can lose it at any moment?

I'm not scared for myself. I'm not shaking in my boots. I'm concerned for other people--including what exposure would do to those who are immunocompromised already.

When did it become wrong to say "Hey, it'll suck if we have increased exposure to radiation. Hope that doesn't happen." ?

[flamingdem]

5. The attitude I got from family on the East Coast

well you're kind of oldish and cancer takes decades to contract so...

I know they are trying to comfort but it's confusing when my urge is to fight being hurt.
Also, I'm not sure it takes so long.

Supposedly cesium causes leukemia. I doubt that takes so long.

[aquart]

11. Dunno. My uncle had leukemia for over 35 years.

Even the doctors thought it was weird.

It did manage to kill him at 89, however.

[TheMadMonk]

13. Benzene from unleaded fuels is a nasty carcinogen too.

That takes no time at all to cause childhood leukemias. Think about that the next time you fire up the lawnmower.

There are plenty more known carcinogens we knowingly release into the environment in amounts which are quantitavely far more harmful than what is coming out of these reactors.

[Ghost Dog]

15. Yes. If you do the numbers, I reckon you'll find the fossil fuel (carbon) industry

is still the biggest killer (and, at the same time, some sort of 'life-enabler') on this earth.

[Kurovski]

27. Causes heart disease, too.

Time to move to the next subject, we already know tobacco kills.

Sometimes I think it's a corporate mask for all the other shit that's dangerous, too.

[northernlights]

23. it depends on whether you get an acute or chronic type

and no matter what type, there are always exceptions, aka outliers.

[aquart]

7. I never said it was gonna be fun or okay.

But if we're stuck with it, we're stuck with it.

[readmoreoften]

16. In that case thanks for the cheery, gosh-darn, can-do attitude.

You're right, we may need it.

[JVS]

10. This definitely falls under the "Shit I don't want to experience" rubric.

[aquart]

21. No shit.

[aquart]

22. Golly, I guess it happened looking at that pacific wind map.

The one that shows it skipping Canada and blowing over every inch of the US. We will not be able to wait to cover the millions without insurance. We have to change that health care bill today. And if we don't, we will have death in our houses.

If you want to waste time "being concerned," fine. But I think we're past that, or we will be with a speed that stuns us.

[JVS]

8. Did you ever ask her if she regretted the trip?

What was her response?

[aquart]

14. We did not get along.

Which I regret dreadfully now, because she clearly had stories to tell. One of her casual snapshots was Douglas MacArthur in Japan.

I forgave everything when I had to clean out her huge medicine cabinet. There was a prescription for tears. I don't know why that got me more than anything but I was never angry at her again.

[Newest Reality]

9. I'm so sorry to hear that.

Let us remember that cancer is a modern disease and it is not only physical and personal but stands as fitting metaphor for the current, dominant way of life that has been foisted upon us as something normal.

We should, nay must, consider the outcome and implications of cancer as an assured outcome for large numbers of us as a warning and a sign about the way of life we have been told and sold as if it were normal and ultimately desirabe. The fine print is never read or noticed, but it does tell of the potential outcome that is the price to pay for the whole deal.

We are now at a pay the Piper stage. The facade is falling away for many. The facade has the beauty, music and wonder of a television commercial that never reveals the sordid and exploitative path of the product, nor the detrimental results of its long-term effects of impact on people and the environment. It could never reveal such things and sell at the same time.

Now that we Americans have been dumped as a cog in the consume, watch, work cycle, this is a good time to get over our fascination with believing the convenient facade for products and politics and get on with what is about living and sustaining life itself. That is always, without a doubt, what is most important to our actuality and sustenance as a species and as individuals. The rest is commentary and often, pure manipulation for someone else's exclusive benefit and empowerment at our expense.

Think realistically about what is important to life as a basis for all else. Put that first and foremost because everything else relies on that as its foundation. Imagination, philosophy, science and religion, so far, do not do well without thriving bodies that are fed, clothed and sheltered, no matter how we would like to wish it were not so.

[Divernan]

17. If you're looking for a job, send your OP to General Electric.

You have the right attitude as far as they are concerned.

[aquart]

20. Oh, what nonsense.

Unless of course you have some miraculous way to prevent the appalling and spectacular meltdown that seems well on its way to whatever is considered high achievement in nuclear disasters, CANCER IS COMING.

If the scope of the disaster is as unimaginable as we are imagining, the horror of cancer is going to be commonplace. Average.

So I told what I knew about a woman who got a nuclear disaster cancer and still made a life for herself.

Gosh, I'm awful. Now go sit under a bridge and eat your heart out because it is bitter and because it is your heart.

[lbrtbell]

18. My mind is blown by the insanity

The lesson to be learned from your stepmother isn't, "Golly gee, cancer is no biggie!" The lesson is, excessive levels of radiation caused cancer then, and it still does now.

Have you forgotten how many people have no health care insurance? Would your stepmother have survived, without health care? That is the situation so many of us find ourselves in.

Do you think cancer isn't a nightmare, even if you survive it? It's bad enough the USA dropped the "atom bomb"--why should people be put through this unnecessarily, all these years later, when it's preventable by not using nuclear power?

It's not the dying of cancer that scares people, it's the horrible suffering from cancer. Dying is blessed relief from it.

I'm happy that your stepmother was a cancer survivor for so long. But please, have some sensitivity to those who aren't, and may not be, as fortunate as she was.

[aquart]

19. She was fortunate?

Since my mother is coping with cancer now, I don't really have a frivolous attitude toward it. It is always a nightmare to be sick, to be out of control of one's body.

BUT IF THIS IS AS BAD AS WE THINK IT IS, CANCER IS COMING, HONEY, IT'S COMING.

And I wanted to say that if we have to live through that nightmare, that there are ways to live through it and that there are long-term survivors.

I'm sorry that's too heartless a statement for you to take in.

[enough]

24. Oh, that's okay then. (nt)

[northernlights]

25. your stepmother was an outlier

congratulations to her, but 95.5% of the population will not be outliers and will be within 2 standard deviations of the median survival.

People die from cancer every day, including children. And response to cancer treatment varies widely. My sister found the chemo not bad at all -- frankly I think she slept through most of it. But the radiation therapy was another thing. If/when her triple-ng breast cancer returns (and it already did once at the average 3 year mark) I don't know if she'll put herself through that again.

She also found unpleasant the constant phlebotomy. Yes, it's just a little stick. But when you veins shrink and become very fragile, what normally would be just a little stick and be one after another after another before they find one that will hold up and deliver some blood. She was having blood drawn from her feet (the last place they'll draw) before she was done her most recent therapy. That was after she'd been stuck in 4 or 5 other spots. And then she looked down and discovered she was now covered in blood, and bleeding onto the floor -- all the prior sticks finally delivered. That was just getting weekly draws for monitoring. We have in-patients drawn daily and multiple times daily.

[marions ghost]

26. sounds like a great life

battling cancer. We all know people living with and dying of cancer. They don't think it's so great really.

Radioactive materials in the control of people who can easily justify sacrificing a population for economic gains. Fearing this situation is the highest form of sanity. We need to feel. We need to feel fear.

:crazy: To say we should all accept living with cancer a reasonable price to pay. :crazy: you can't be for real
:argh: I'm taking your post as :sarcasm: :shrug:

[Hissyspit]

28. Who paid for it?

The old methods? Who paid for it?