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>>>AnneMarie Ciccarella: When you are diagnosed with breast cancer, people are going to say
the dumbest things and I have three thoughts as to what you are going to hear and how you
might want to handle it.
1. The first one, which is always a little bit difficult to listen to, are the well intentioned
who feel the need to tell you about their aunts, sisters, and cousin who just passed
away or somebody who is having an awful time with chemotherapy. My suggestion would be
to let it go, in in one ear and out the other. Understand that people are not malicious;
they just don’t know what to say and perhaps may be you would want to screen those people’s
phone calls until you are in a little bit better place to deal with hearing stuff like
that. 2. The second thing that I would say is everyone
is going to have a thought about some miracle cure that came along and helped somebody tremendously.
I would have a candid answer for those people, very politely: “Thank you so much for giving
me that information. I will be sure to discuss it with my doctor the next time I see him
or her.” It is not a good idea to turn people off by just pushing them away especially if
they are part of your support system by the same token, your doctor needs to be the person…
if you do not trust your doctor you are done. 3. The last thing that breast cancer patients
in particular hear and it is extremely upsetting to all of us and it is even five years out
it is still upsetting. You got a good cancer; at least you got a *** job out of the deal.
What did you do to make it happen? Did you get your mammography on time? Were you not
eating right? I do not know. I do not have any answer for that because I still have my
own problems dealing with those questions, but they are things that are going to come
back at you even years after the diagnosis is over. So everyone needs to kind of come
up with an idea and stick with it as to how they going to answer those questions.
Hi, I am AnneMarie Ciccarella, breast cancer advocate. I can be reached at chemobrainfog
on Twitter or on my blog at www.chemo-brain.blogspot.com.