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The dumbest things people have said to you/about you

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Comments

  • justagirl
    justagirl Member Posts: 633
    edited July 2011

    annie - a great list!

    My  best was when I was told I had to keep a positive outlook - it made all the difference.Hmmm? - tell it to the breast cancer cells!!!!!!!!!!

    or:  your haircut looks so 'sporty' .....when I first was showing my new crop of hair after chemo.

    or: upon finding out I was going to have a double mastectomy with reconstruction - 'now you can get really big ones!'

    Yikes - are these people real who make these comments or aliens from another life?

  • Kay_G
    Kay_G Member Posts: 1,914
    edited July 2011

    Saw my onc on Monday before Herceptin and Taxotere.  Having a mastectomy with DIEP reconstruction on Aug. 17.  I do love my onc, but she asked me if the PS was going to "lift" the other side too.  I told she said she was.  So the onc told me you're going to look 20.  I don't know, I just didn't really like that comment.  It seems insensitive.  I guess she is trying to put a positive spin on it, but geez, I would think she would know better.  Or maybe it's me and I am just being overly sensitive.

    Shiela, so sorry for the sleep problems.  I am dealing with them myself right now, but I think it's the steroids from the last Taxotere still.  I hope you get some relief.  {{{HUGS}}}  Namaste, Kay

  • barbe1958
    barbe1958 Member Posts: 7,605
    edited July 2011

    Sheila, good news!!! It's only THURSDAY today, so you haven't been an insomniac for as long as you thougth!!!!

  • mccrimmon324
    mccrimmon324 Member Posts: 794
    edited July 2011

    Hey everyone, I'm new to this thread and feeling the need to vent.  I hope you don't mind me cutting in. 

    I have / had a girlfriend who is so self centered and always thinking of herself that I once tried to cut the ties but BC has / had brought us back together, she tried to be supportive.  I'm currently doing chemo and my grandmother passed away 2 weeks ago.  Well this friend was kind enough to call me to see how I was, I said I'm ok, then told her about grandmom then she started complaining about everything from her man to his ex, his kids, money... when she was finshed she said to me.  At least I'm still healthy! 

    I haven't spoken to her since. 

    Thanks for letting me vent.  It's really been eating at me.

    Heather

  • nativemainer
    nativemainer Member Posts: 7,960
    edited July 2011

    Heather, thats what this thread is all about, venting and sharing how we feel about the stupid comments we get so we can keep on functioning.  Vent anytime1

     Kay, apparently hypersensitivity comes with the territory since so many of us feel that way about certain comments.  

  • Nanorama
    Nanorama Member Posts: 8
    edited July 2011

    Kay, I totally agree with what you wrote. I just completed my double DIEP and if there is one thing I cannot stand, it's that my onc, my surgeon, my PS, and even the very nice guy who tattooed my nips all raved about "what a good job" I got.  

    I'm sure there's lots worse out there, and they're trying to make me - or is it themselves? - feel better about cancer and its ravages, but puh-LEEZ, people, let's not go crazy here with the rave reviews. I've got mesa-flat foobs with a mile-wide valley in between and multiple scars from lumpectomy/mastectomy/ALND/TEs/DIEP incisions, plus a honking big red scar searing across my abdomen, plus a total loss of erogenous sensation... not to mention the permanent fear lurking of the cancer coming back...and you want me to dance for joy and tell myself how fortunate I am??

    Yeah, I know. I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate I was educated and aware enough to find my cancer myself, a few weeks after a 'clean' mammogram and two 'clean' clinical exams by competent physicians. I'm fortunate to live in a major metro area with good hospitals and top physicians. I'm fortunate my 67 year old husband is still working, poor devil, so we had good insurance that covered such caviar-level delicacies as the OncotypeDx test and TEs followed by a double DIEP, the bills for all of which would buy a modest 3-bedroom house in most communities. I'm fortunate, so fortunate.

    No one likes it when we "ladies" go "negative", perish the thought!, but damn, medical professionals' insistence on emphasizing the so-called "positive" ends up censoring me from expressing my genuine, and I think legitimate, sadness and anger at what I've lost - my breasts, my friends since age 11, my favorite body parts.  I have a hard time now seeing women with normal breasts in cleavage-revealing dresses. I look fine in regular clothes and no one would ever know from looking at me that I'm a double 'amputee', and most of the time I manage to push aside fears of recurrence, but darn it, girls, this wasn't on my life plan, or on yours!!  Underneath my coping exterior lurks the woman who wants to shout: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take your 'isn't it wonderful' s--t any more!"

    Phew! I feel MUCH better for writing that!!!!! LOLZ

    Nan 

  • Elizabeth1889
    Elizabeth1889 Member Posts: 509
    edited July 2011

    My personal favorite dumb thing was the ultrasound nurse who said that if I had to have cancer, breast cancer was a good kind to have.

  • Nanorama
    Nanorama Member Posts: 8
    edited July 2011

    Mcrimmon - One thing cancer has done for me is sort out the real friends from the not. A woman who was, I had thought, among my closest friends proved not to be supportive and we are no longer close. Meanwhile, another woman who had previously been more of a social acquaintance than a close friend stepped up to the plate, organized dinner deliveries, all with a quiet and self-effacing efficiency that asked for no effusions of gratitude from me. So people can surprise you in both good and not so good ways. I lost one friend and gained another.

    Nan 

  • Kay_G
    Kay_G Member Posts: 1,914
    edited July 2011

    Thanks Nan for legitimizing my feelings.

    I just finished 8 rounds of pretty tough chemo.  I'm about to get a mastectomy with DIEP. I'm scared to death of the surgery.  I still have to meet with an RO and get radiation once this is done.  I don't really feel like celebrating a tummy tuck and breast lift that I never wanted or asked for.  I just feel like grieving and feeling sorry for myself, and I don't want everyone to always try to stop me from doing that.  I guess if it hasn't happened to you, you just can't understand the feeling.  I am so glad the people here "get it". 

    Thanks again.

  • Nanorama
    Nanorama Member Posts: 8
    edited July 2011

    Elizabeth - LOLZ! People look for something comforting to say. But it's themselves they are trying to comfort, I think. 

    My own personal favorite was the member of my religious community who took it upon herself to come up to me and say, with real emotion, "I hope you are being followed carefully - are you? Because my cousin had breast cancer last year, and now she went back for her scans, and it's everywhere, her bones, her lungs, liver,, everything, and there's nothing to be done for her."

    I looked her straight in the eye, and said: "I want to be sure you are listening and can hear what I am saying to you. That is exactly the sort of story you do NOT tell someone who's had cancer. I know you are upset about your cousin, but please find someone more appropriate to share your feelings with."

    She didn't back down. "I was just concerned for you," she insisted. I gave up and walked away. 

    I saw her a few weeks later at a committee meeting. The host had put a bowl of tortilla chips on the table.  I hadn't managed to have dinner and was hungry, so I ate some of the chips. "Oh," said my 'friend,' "you shouldn't be eating that!"

    What should I have said? I said nothing because I didn't want to get into it with her in front of everyone else. This woman is no dummy - she's the president of our community and an architect by profession, and a talented musician to boot - but who somehow seems tone-deaf! 

    Nan 

  • Nanorama
    Nanorama Member Posts: 8
    edited July 2011

    Kay - I think most women on here would validate your feelings. It's the rest of the world that is the problem. I think there are few people lucky enough to be in the non-BC universe who actually want to, and are ready to, hear about our anger and sadness and sense of being cheated. It's too hard for them to hear it. So they water it down and turn it anodyne - for themselves, not for us.

    That's why I'm sort of anti-pink-ribbon, with all the marching and uplift and "cancer is life's greatest lesson," and survivor/warrior talk. I feel like it's yet another way of channeling and thus blunting the force of our fury at having had this disease, many of us at a quite young age.  What if we really allowed ourselves, as a group, to get MAD?!?!?!?!?!? Millions of women with this disease - surely this is something in our environment, our lifestyle - our breasts are the canary in the coal mine - yet most research is driven by money, by Big Pharma, testing expensive new pharmaceuticals to treat it -- little money goes to discover BC's origins and perhaps reduce the millions to thousands!

    Whew, I'm on a tear today!!

    Nan 

  • Jen42
    Jen42 Member Posts: 71
    edited July 2011

    love all the comments, ladies. Just nodding and/or shaking my head as I read.

    I had a woman say, "at least you got the glamorous cancer"

    EXCUSE ME ?!?!

    I replied, "there is nothing glamorous about ANY cancer."

    She tried to explain, "I just meant...all the pink ribbon stuff...all the women uniting for fundraising walks..."

    WHATEVER !  Yell 

    By the way, I read somewhere that Stand Up 2 Cancer is a worthwhile organization to support...all the money goes to researching for a cure...not a bunch of pink ribbon flair...

    And I'm not totally against the pink ribbon stuff. Just -- what -- 10 years ago (?) things were so much more grim on the awareness front for this disease. But ALL cancer sucks and, I agree, money needs to go to the right places to figure out why there is so much cancer in first place. (What a toxic world we live in!)

  • PLJ
    PLJ Member Posts: 65
    edited February 2012
  • riley702
    riley702 Member Posts: 575
    edited July 2011

    LOL, PLJ! I'm sure there are people we all meet who wonder why we're smiling! We're thinking, "What a dumbass" "Should I tell them what I really think?" or more often with me, it's visualizing tossing them under a bus.

    And Nan, I'm LMAO with you on a tear, so please carry on. It's very cathartic!

  • Nanorama
    Nanorama Member Posts: 8
    edited July 2011

    Dear Kay - just saw your reply. I too was terrified of doing the DIEP. Ten hours in surgery!?!?!?!  Six weeks in recovery??? My religion had always been "no elective surgery". I was reallly quite petrified of the whole thing and never would have done it - but for the fact that, from my perspective, the other 2 alternatives (implants or nothing) looked, if possible, even less acceptable.  So among my 3 lousy options, I picked Box #1, the DIEP, based mainly on studies showing the highest level of long-term satisfaction post-mastectomy among DIEPers.

    It all turned out as well as it can turn out. I still say the word "reconstruction" is misleading; they ain't "re"-ing anything. They are just... constructing something new. It's what I'd call a "reasonable facsimile" - it's warm, feels natural, usually fills the bra properly, even can create a bit of cleavage when lying on my side. Sure beats seeing my ravaged flat right chest every morning and evening when I dress and undress. Did that for 7 months till I got the cancer dx in the left breast and had my "moment of clarity", as I refer to it - or, in less highfallutin' terms - "I WANT BOOBS!" 

    So keep your goal in mind. The overwhelming majority of DIEPs turn out just fine. If you've got an experienced surgeon and a good hospital, chances are you should have a good outcome. It may not make you "whole again" (the whole sales pitch from the PS), but it will make you feel better about how you look. You deserve to feel as good as you can about yourself, and this is the way you have chosen to achieve that goal. Out here rooting for you!

    Nan

    Double DIEPer 

  • tinkertude
    tinkertude Member Posts: 1,998
    edited July 2011

    NAN..Well said is all I can say!... I am a double DIEPER TOO!

  • Annabella58
    Annabella58 Member Posts: 916
    edited July 2011

    Oh my word, PLJ; what an a**hole of a little penguin.

    Uninformed too.  Does the little penguin not know that we get MRIs precisely because we still have breast TISSUE all the way up to our clavicles?  And that this can harbor cancer cells?

    Not much of a doctor, the jerk.  Granted, the chance is minimal (2%) but it is there.  What a (pun completely intended) boob. :).

  • Just_V
    Just_V Member Posts: 436
    edited July 2011
    Annie - when did boob become a bad word - I say that we BCers take it back!!!! hm.. I was trying to think of another body part to call that doctor... but think that if I wrote the one that came to mind, I might get in trouble.. (it is decidedly masculine... )
  • CrazyKitties
    CrazyKitties Member Posts: 58
    edited July 2011

    Nan, I got rid of toxic people as well. Not as easy when one of them is my mom, however. I agree that it makes other people feel better when they try to put a happy Face sticker on our new and fake as shit tits.

  • Nanorama
    Nanorama Member Posts: 8
    edited July 2011

    Agreed, CrazyKittie! When the toxicity comes from Mom, that is a tough one to handle. Just keep reminding her that she can't one-up you with her knee or whatever.

    Mine's a complete narcissist, but since she too had BC (along with my sister) in 2009, we're a bit of a Family BC club. She's 86 so they didn't treat her too aggressively compared to her daughters, who both ended up with Mxs and recon, but still there's some understanding and sorrow for what we have been through in the past couple of years.

     I love your phrase "put a happy face sticker on our fake as shit tits". Must remember it! 

  • Southamptonmom
    Southamptonmom Member Posts: 71
    edited July 2011

    I was at the hospital for 8.5 hours today. Their excuse: There are 125 patients on the schedule. Hmmm.... Didn't anyone think that was too many. I waited for labs and port access, waited for the doctors, then waitesd 2.5 hours past my scheduled chemo time. If I were 2 hours late, they wouldn't take me. I think they are so insensitive and don't even consider the fact that the patients waiting are SICK. Cheese and crackers, don't tell me there are 125 patients on the schedule, tell me that you won't over book any more!!!

  • nativemainer
    nativemainer Member Posts: 7,960
    edited July 2011

    Southamptonmom--PLEASE file a complaint with the center about the wait and the overbooking!  There is no reason for that, and unless we complain about such things we will continue to be treated like items on an assembly line.  After all, that's the way to make the most $$ and chemo is a money maker for most hospitals. 

  • mebmarj
    mebmarj Member Posts: 143
    edited July 2011

    Out and about running errands today. Got one of my favorite (heavy sarcasm) comments. The first said a bit hesitantly and almost in a voice you'd talk to a small child in, "how are you feeling?" ugh. Really? I'm out in public so, it must be a good day. And something must've changed on my face because it was quickly followed by, "You look great and your color is good! Love your scarf!"



    I've gone to just saying, 'today is a good day' when I'm out of the house and it actually is a good day. Cause I don't feel like I got do any 'splaining to nobody!



    So many people don't get it, until they become a member of the club.





  • riley702
    riley702 Member Posts: 575
    edited August 2011

    Got a card in the mail from my BS's office reminding me of my next 3 month appt. All well and good, until I see at the bottom of the card, "Your next mammogram is due in Oct." Yell

    Um, bilateral mastectomy? I Have No Boobs!!! No mams to gram. And surely my BS's office should know that! C'mon, already. *disgusted*

  • 3jaysmom
    3jaysmom Member Posts: 2,604
    edited August 2011

    they send them out automatically; but they should have @ stacks to choose from!!boobs and foobshahaha        3jays

  • riley702
    riley702 Member Posts: 575
    edited August 2011

    I don't even have foobs! I'm boobless and foobless!

  • barbe1958
    barbe1958 Member Posts: 7,605
    edited August 2011

    So am I riley and I hate it too!!!

  • barbe1958
    barbe1958 Member Posts: 7,605
    edited August 2011

    The notes I mean. The last one I got was congratulations on your clear mammo, we'll see you in two years.

    TWO years? Really!!!???!!!

  • riley702
    riley702 Member Posts: 575
    edited August 2011

    I know! Weed through those automatic notes a little better, people.

  • nativemainer
    nativemainer Member Posts: 7,960
    edited August 2011

    has any one with recon, or better yet no boobs, ever shown up for a mammo?  I would love to know the reaction of the staff.  Maybe if that happened enough they'd realize they would stop losing money if they adjusted their automated call back systems. 

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