I'm Just Sayin'...

Folks, here is something that irritates the hell out of me, so get ready for a vent.
I had a great lunch with a dear friend in Door County last week. Now, I'm not faulting her, so much, as her thoughts and words simply reflect the thoughts and words of a good number of well-meaning, dangerously educated people I've encountered over the last year and a half. She isn't the first one to say this to me, but as I headed home, I let out a breath and thought, there it is again.
So I have to say it. Please don't blame cancer patients for their cancer.
Don't tell the cancer patient that "holding it all in" for so many years made them "get" cancer. Or they "got" cancer because of their repressed anger/lack of self-esteem/acceptance of verbal abuse or whatever. Don't ask a cancer victim why they thought they "got" cancer, as if a few sessions on the therapist's couch would have the same curative effect as ten rounds of chemo. I have no idea why I "got" cancer and you did not.
There are mean, nasty, horrible people who don't get cancer and live a long, prosperous life - think Leona Helmsley! There are people who eat frozen pizza and potato chips every night for dinner, who work in nuclear power plants, who never exercise, who don't get cancer. When you say to the cancer patient, "No wonder you have cancer" it's blaming the victim. I'm reminded of the way sick people were cast out of the synagogue because their illness reflected their sin, and they were, therefore, unclean (and cut off from the very community whose support was necessary for their healing). I didn't give myself cancer. I'm a victim of this disease. Maybe it was the PCB's in Michigan's soil, or the Fox River, or the crap in the air that caused it. Maybe it was just a random event for a bunch of cells in my body.
All that being said, of COURSE there are many things cancer victims need for their healing, including, but not limited to, good therapy to process what the disease means to their lives; healthy exercise and good food; lots of love and positive regard; prayer; a reason to live each day. These things we know. We know that life post-cancer is never the same, and that we are irrevocably changed by all that happens to us.
Focus, dear friends, on these things with the cancer patients in your life.
(And thank you to all my friends who have!)