Cancer Judgement

This is a real Facebook exchange.  It is a good snapshot of how people view and judge others.  I hope you understand the last exchange I made to 'Linda' who used her anger at the bar woman to essentially tell her story, unsolicited and pompously. She is, to me, a jealous hater of other fighters.  Isn't her aggressive angry but 'look at me' approach to coping just as inappropriate and usurious as asking for a drink?? Count the number of 'I's and 'me's in her post...

BTW, I am the 'Lyn'...

DXXXXX

10 hours ago

So, I was out at the bar tonight, I met this woman that was trying to get people to buy her drinks. When she came to me and asked for a drink, I asked her why I owed her a drink. her response was that she found out she had cancer, and she was using this for her reason to get drinks. As it turned out, she had only had a biopsy! Her test results had not been completed, and she hadn't been informed of the outcome of her test. Playing on the fact of she might have cancer, and using it on those that might buy her a drink is just is disturbing to me!

I like others, I know have lost someone from cancer. Be it family or friend, I find it really absurd that one would go to this level to play on persons that might be unsuspecting. I had the ware with all to ask what her diagnosis was after her test. As I understood she hadn't learned the results of her test at that time.

I don't know how it works, but to use or play on people emotions, when you don't know you are conclusive of having cancer.

Well that just seems wrong to me!

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• You, XXXX and 7 others like this.
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  Terry AFAIK, there is no "good" reason for anyone to go around begging for drinks, let alone using a bogus story to evoke sympathy to acquire that drink..
  Deception should never be rewarded!!

  8 hours ago · Like · 2
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  David  I once had a biopsy for cancer, It was the scariest 21 hours of my life..After that it was the panic mode of finding out it was stage 4 and in my head & throat with no gaurantee of making 30 days.. A free drink and clearing my mind with someone I didn't know that first 21 hours would have been a chance to not have to talk about it to my loved ones who couldn't deal with it at the moment..Just hearing the word that you possibly may have cancer can be a big hit to your stress level and your own emotions, and can trigger different ways of dealing with it for each person.
  Don't let it get to you Darrel, last night she may have been trying to let her hair down if only just for sympathy, but tonight she may be alone and trying to deal with the words that will reduce the mightiest man to total fear and emotional breakdown.. 
  If you see her again and she is fine buy her a drink to celebrate her not having to enter the battle zone and leave it at that. If you never see her again buy one extra and leave it on the table in her memory just in case she drew the short straw..

  7 hours ago · Unlike · 7
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  Gail  Very well said Dave. I have to say I was agreeing with your friend but your words of wisdom and experience totally gives the story a new light.

  6 hours ago via mobile · Like · 2
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  Kathy Agreed!

  2 hours ago via mobile · Like
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  Lyn Dave, before I read what you wrote, my brain was working on how to say the same thing. But, you said it so eloquently. I just learned that I have breast cancer, three days ago. Yesterday, as I was sitting in a silly kimono shirt prior to yet another excavation in a new spot, I watched a young woman shaking, sweating, teary-eyed and nearly wringing her cell phone into pieces. Being a nurse, I couldn't help but ask 'are you okay? Can I get you anything?' She then told me she was getting a mammogram, a second view to better visualize a questionable area on the first. Not even a biopsy, but enough to challenge her coping skills and send her into the land of 'What If'. We will all handle the news differently. There is no right or wrong way. This woman may be a needy and dependent woman in her normal life and is acting to type. Or, she may be the strongest, most reliable pillar of support carrying everyone else's concerns on her shoulders and now is completely out of her depth, being out of control and reeling with the unknown and the waiting.

  2 hours ago via mobile · Like
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  Linda  I don't care for ANYONE who asks people to buy them a drink, women who do this just piss me off! If you can't afford to drink, why are you at the bar? The whole issue of having a terminal disease is frightening, and some people panic before any results are in, even though it doesn't change anything, or help in any way... Having my biopsy wasn't scarey, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER! Getting my results was an eye opener though, I went through a period of depression and more anger and frustration than I've ever felt in my life when I found out I had IPF. Then I went through a period of time where I had to decide whether I wanted to live or die, I chose life! One of the hardest things I've had to do was ask for help, but my social worker at University of Washington Medical Center said that fundraising was a major necessity! And so we have had a major fundraiser at Spirit's Bar, with 9 different bands and a lot of great people, and I've had a Facebook Fundraiser, and I had to have help, but have HATED having to ask! I am now on the lung transplant list, at 14% lung capacity, waiting for my saving grace, BUT, through it all, I've never tried to get people to have pity for me! Life sucks sometimes! Get over it! My goal now is to live long enough to tell my story, and to get more people to sign up to become organ donors, 18 PEOPLE DIE EVERY DAY WAITING FOR A TRANSPLANT, My goal: MAKE THAT NUMBER A "ZERO"!!!

  24 minutes ago · Like
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  Lyn  Well, Linda Merritt, you are obviously a better person than the woman in the bar, for your strength and coping ability... good luck in your healing.

  20 minutes ago · Like
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  Lyn  Cancer is not a competition; whose is worse, whose is more deadly, who is coping the 'right' way, who is coping the 'wrong' way. We don't know the back story of any other patient and have no right to judge. We have the right to walk away from someone who is behaving in a way that we don't agree with, but to judge them? To say 'she should do it like ME, because MY way is so much better, and this is why...' is to place yourself in a superior position of criticism that no person occupies. One can only pretend to judge, and some do, because that makes them feel better, more superior, more in control. Cancer doesn't give a shit how others judge the patient, but others judging that person only adds to their pain. Being angry at others for not sucking it up and being like one's strong self is a coping mechanism, too, and not a very nice one. And if it leads to the opportunity to shout out how terrific oneself is 'handling' cancer, that, too, is just another sad coping mechanism... again, we all are just people after all, and none of us have all, or even very many of, the answers.

  5 minutes ago · Like