I do know what you are saying, Lemon Grove. I am working hard to convince my family that I am NOT cured, and it is NOT over, even if for the time being I am not diagnosed with secondaries. BUT (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) I think it may be part of the human condition for us and/or our loved ones to try to deny our mortality, even up to the point of death in some instances. My friend who is suffering from MS tells me that her family constantly dismiss her symptoms and try to play them down, even though she can see that she is worsening before their eyes, and actually really needs emotionally for them to honour her illness rather than dismiss it. When my mother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer four years ago, her slightly deaf husband mis-heard the doctor, and thought that she could (and would) be cured, and they spent most of the next year in that completely ridiculous (to her daughters) place, even though we kept trying to get them to understand and cope with the reality. Same with my sister's husband's pancreatic cancer, also stage four. They were going to "beat this thing". Or not, as the case was.
I know that breast cancer IS different. Because nowadays so many women do continue to live long lives with BC, it is easier for the fiction of immortality to be cast over the illness. I think that leukemia and lymphoma are a bit the same; there are so many people who recover or go into remission that it is assumed that if you get it, no big deal. But it is a big deal, men and women still die of breast cancer in far too great a number for any complacency. I have always been impressed that Jenni Murray usually mentions the women who haven't been as lucky as she has been when she talks about her cancer.
Part of the reason that it is important for us to make the story clear, is that there is so much more work that needs to be done, and it'll be expensive. Like the cyberknife (I'll go over and bump it, after this waffle). And I too find the words and stories of women with secondary breast cancer worth reading. I'm still scared of dying, and I'm still scared of developing secondaries, but you all have made my fears more bearable. Many of us primaries who have crashed this conversation (I blame this ridiculous forum, where you don't know what catagory you're crashing, all you see is the thread name--roll on Springtime and a new design) have learned a lot from your articulate arguments. One of the reasons it is helpful for me as a primary to read the seconday threads is that it gives me a language to use with friends and family. 'Last month Val wrote that...', 'Lemongrove says....', 'A woman I know with secondaries in her liver and bones says..', 'When Claire was dying she told us...'. It helps make it a reality, not just for me, but for my friends and family who need to understand. Thank you, and, when you can, keep writing (that includes you, Tawny, try not to let our insensitivity get you down--some of us are a bit bull-in-a-china-shopish, but we don't mean to be)
