#cancer cw

[oscconfessions]

bfb au where everything is the same except x has breast cancer

.

[in-sufficientdata]

This can be a huge source of medical trauma and it's so cruel that it's being imposed on people by the medical establishment itself. How can they help but feel anything but helpless? There's no fighting that.

I can't help but think of this from my own perspective as a fibromyalgia patient who keeps having to fight being thought of as (or even being labeled as) drug-seeking.

I am literally just trying to live life closer to the standard that 'normal' people have every day.

Why is it in any way fair that most people are mostly pain-free and capable of doing the things they want to do, but I have to suffer with pain on a daily basis that is at minimum, on a very rare, very good day, at level 5?

Why is it when I report that my pain level is at level 7, 8, 9, I only get doctors side-eyeing me and explaining my OTC options?

I have had chronic pain since I was 8. I'm very fucking aware of my OTC options, so no thank you, doc.

And when I spend 20 minutes explaining in detail that my daily pain has noticeably increased and changed in quality since around January 1st, why should I have my PCP giggle at me every time I say that I need help with managing my pain and learning ways to deal with it?

It felt incredibly invalidating and I wish he would have said, look, I don't have the expertise to help you, so here's a referral to a pain specialist.

I only found out there was a such thing by trying to research the topic after this on my own!

So yeah, it's not just the insurance companies, it's the doctors, too.

It's almost like having a profit-motivated medical establishment hurts patients.

[snarp]

Local hospital system announces that oncology department has "reconsidered its allegiances" and is now on the cancer's side.

[luthienne]

[simplepotatofarmer]

i took my youngest to the pediatrician today and the youngest mentioned that they understand cancer because a youtuber they loved got sick and passed away. and immediately the doctor says, oh i think i know who you mean.

it turns out her kids were huge fans of techno and she had watched some of his videos because that's just what you do when you're a parent and your kids watch something. she let my youngest talk about techno for a bit and said that her kids liked the 'skypixel' videos. we didn't correct her. it was just so nice to know there's so many people out there that remember techno, that love him.

[addictedtostorytelling]

"okay, doctor. it's quite simple: i have a brain tumor. glioblastoma multiforme. bummer, huh? it gets better: i found out that it's inoperable."

[girlhorse]

if anyone has any money they could donate it would be appreciated.

if my posts have been a bit confusing the breakdown is my mom was diagnosed with (a very bad) brain cancer & is going thru treatment currently. i moved cross country to get to her and move in with her and on top of that i have to live with my childhood abuser (step father). It's causing extreme distress but im broke and i dont have a lot of options. i am out of a job currently but have an interview Tuesday. anything helps. i wasnt able to work for a month due to the news & the move. i have bills to pay and i dont know when my next paycheck will be. thank you

ko-fi

venmo - @enzobenzoo

[armoricaroyalty]

Through fire and storm, the stone and slate of Morley Cottage had been its salvation. Older and grander buildings had been fallen into ruin, but the unassuming house had stood through the decades, a safe haven for generations of St. Fleurs. It was where Andre had taken his first steps, nearly sixty years before. It was the site of his last conversation with his mother. Swaying slightly, Andre rose to his feet. The conversation fell away, puzzled silence settling over the room as seven expectant faces turned toward him. There were tears in Elise's eyes. He forced himself to look away.

Previous | Chapter Start | Beginning | Next

author's note: so...this is it, the thing I've been building toward since the very beginning.

If you'd like to know more about how I plan to handle cancer as a subject (and a list of the tags I'll be using), click here.

Transcript beneath the cut.

ANDRE | Excuse me...I'll uh, try to keep this brief. I think we all know I'm not much of a public speaker.

A thin ripple of laughter. Amidst the uncertainty, Andre could feel Freddy seeking his gaze, but he kept his eyes down. It was too much like looking in a mirror.

ANDRE | There's something I've been keeping from you. And...I'm sorry. Last week, I...I...I... [ choking ] I'm sorry, I can't--

The silence in that room was profound. No one dared speak, no one dared breathe. Only Elise was unaffected by the dreadful atmosphere; she was on her feet the moment tears began to roll down Andre's cheeks.

There was only one thing she could do for him now.

ELISE | There's no easy way to say this, so...I'll just say it. Last week, your father met with his oncologist for a routine screening. He got the results two days ago. The cancer is back. And this time, it's terminal.

[realpokemon]

The first time i saw ur hospital pick i thought they put a ditto in ur fucking IV bag

they put a ditto in my blood to invent cancers you’ve never even fucking heard of

[talaricula]

I'm seeing lots of speculation in the wake of the unwanted guest about whether absorbing Loveday's soul is what made Cytherea snap and sure, I see the theory, but personally as a cancer survivor I have never ever questioned why Cytherea snapped

Cancer is an existentially terrifying, often debilitatingly painful and/or exhausting illness, that, if not cured, takes over your body bit by bit, gets into the highly essential bits which increases the suffering and/or fundamentally changes you as a person, makes you extremely vulnerable and dependent on others, and almost inevitably kills you unless you get it when you're old enough and die of old age first instead. Its treatment is often just as painful and exhausting as the illness, or even more so, and doesn't always work. When you have cancer, there are two ways out: being cured (preferable) or, when that is not an option, deciding for yourself when you have reached the point where the suffering is so bad and the outlook so non existent that you would rather die now rather than later after even more and worse suffering.

And John took both of those options away from Cytherea and from her entire line of descendants. When he had the option to cure them all all along. Idk about y'all but the revelation in Nona that John could cure cancer was the number one earth shattering realisation for me. He did this to her, and to the entire Seventh House, on purpose.

This is the first giant betrayal to me. For generation after generation, for TEN THOUSAND YEARS, this man let the heirs of the Seventh House be sick for functionally their entire lives, likely starting in childhood, go through an incalculable amount of painful and exhausting experimental treatments bc he didn't even bring modern medicine into his New Order, and die in their twenties or thirties at best, when he could have STOPPED THIS ALL ALONG with little more effort than snapping his fingers.

Second big betrayal is towards Cytherea herself, but basically the same point : he could have cured her at any time. Before she became Lyctor, possibly, since we're not sure how static Lyctor bodies are, but Mercy's powers, Harrow's lobotomy and Ianthe's arm suggest that it would have been an option afterwards too. And he didn't. He let her have cancer for TEN THOUSAND years without curing her. And he calls himself her friend. Absolutely fuck that bastard.

Third big betrayal is the same betrayal that he inflicts on all the other Lyctors, but imo worse bc of Cytherea's illness. It seems from the books that Lyctors are, if obv not functionally immortal, at least Very Difficult to kill. Consequently, John demands Cytherea's loyalty not only in the form of killing the person she loves the most in the world, but in the very same act, in the form of cutting off the One escape route she has left out of the suffering he's purposefully keeping her in. In short, he takes the one person away from her who she perhaps doesn't resent depending on and, in the same act, makes it A Lot more difficult for her to choose euthanasia. (There's meta in this about the deeply realistic and also Terrifying ableism of John "admits openly that he'll pay any price so the people he loves can't leave him" making his sick friend dependent on him by keeping her sick, taking away her (arguable) main caretaker and cutting her off from the option of leaving him by dying.)

And at the same time that the other Lyctors realise John's betrayal re: their cavaliers, Cytherea potentially realises ALL OF THIS. TEN THOUSAND years of suffering, of seeing her House suffer, on top of losing the person she cares about the most, and ALL OF IT was avoidable, and not just avoidable but EASY TO AVOID? Is it any wonder she went on a rampage to bring down John and everything he cared about and had worked towards, and that she didn't care about dying at the end (or, perhaps, was even counting on that outcome)? I had cancer (as an aware adult) for a year in the best imaginable circumstances and am still fucked up about almost a decade later. After TEN THOUSAND YEARS and learning there had been another option all along, I'd have done WAY WORSE than Cytherea. I really don't think she needed to absorb anyone's soul to get there. It is, in my opinion, a deeply understandable and realistic reaction.

[schrijverr]

I'm looking into blood thinners for fics ideas to maybe write and, y'all, side effects can include dizziness, nausea, tiredness, bloody noses that last less than 10 minutes and hair loss. There is so much fucking angst potential in the 118 not talking to Buck for a little while due to the lawsuit only to run into him (maybe even during the grocery store scene) and it's a bad day for him and his meds, only for everyone to come to some very, very wrong conclusions about what has happened to Buck's health in the time they didn't see him. Like, what are you going to think if you see zombie Buck with medicinal hair loss, dabbing away a bloody nose as he sways a little with a screwed up face? Nothing good, that's what.

[rofax]

Since I'm "on the other side" of cancer for now, I feel like I can make jokes about it without jinxing everything.

[ash-rigby]

Posting about this just to get it out of me.

A few days ago, my dad was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, and is terminal. He hasn't been well since I was a teenager, having developed NPH around 14 years ago which, despite the effectiveness of the initial treatment he got (a shunt in his head that drains the excess fluid), has slowly deteriorated his physical/mental health and mobility over time. I honestly didn't think he'd live another decade given his progression but I thought he had, you know, more than probably less than a year now. He's in the hospital undergoing treatment for a slew of other issues he has going on that need to be stabilized before we can even think about addressing the tumor in whatever way we're going to. My mom, sister, and I are hoping that once he's recovered a bit from these that he will be more mentally with-it to have a proper conversation about whether he wants to go through chemo or just let the cancer run its course; otherwise it's up to us and that just feels like an impossible decision right now. As of now, his short-term memory is particularly shot and my mom keeps having to remind him that he's in the hospital. Hopefully, he'll be able to be transferred to a hospital closer to home to complete his treatment soon so my sister and I can visit him.

I'm doing as well as I can. Still feels unreal. Just lost my grandma and now this.

[azuresquirrel]

So my friend that I posted about visiting in the cancer ward last week?

She passed away today.

She was my friend in my life for 12 years. I have drawings of hers hanging on my fridge. She was 36.

I am simply so tired of cancer.

[useless-englandfacts]

not her describing people who have literal cancer and are too sick to leave the house as ‘lesser mortals’

[addictedtostorytelling]

"i can't believe they call it a tumor board."