Today my boyfriend's mom is having a masectomy. We're pretty sure that once healed she'll be okay, although that will be a long process, so no, that's not what this entry is about.
Instead, I'd like to approach the language surrounding this whole "cancer" thing. Her doctors have gone on and on about how she never had kids, and THAT'S why she has breast cancer now (he's adopted, she's infertile, and so this is definitely not a "fault" issue). Except it really does SEEM to be a fault issue. "Well, if you had just done what you're supposed to do, and had kids the naturnal normal way, then you wouldn't have cancer now" ... or at least, that's how I'm reading a lot of the research.
I've actually seen a lot of news articles recently about how having kids prevents all sorts of cancers, and it's not surprising to see since birth rates are falling.
So it seems to be a "breed or die" message, and I don't particularly like it. In her case, it's utterly ludricrous anyway. Her mom had the same type of cancer, had the same procedure, and lived for years after, AND had four kids. Clearly, breeding was not the answer to cancer prevention here. So what the heck is up with the guilt trip?
Lastly, I will finish up with yet another complaint: on one hand, they're telling us to have sex, have kids, or die. On the other, a vaccine was recently released that would make having sex a lot safer, since we'd be less likely to get HPV and cervical cancer were we to get it. I asked my doctor becuase i've known it's been coming for a long time, not because of the silly commercials. This shot has been around for a long time but was blocked partially by groups that thought it would make women into whores, but uh, that's another post entirely. You want to know how much this thing costs?
Nobody's insurance covers it, it's a series of 3 shots, and it's $170 per shot. The women that could benefit the most from this will probably never be able to afford it. Hell, I'm still debating whether I'm willing to drop the cash or not. I'm not sure what the price is tied to--don't people want this? Don't LOTS of people want this and want their daughters to get it? Or do they just think we'll be whores if we get it? Or do drug companies just know that they can charge whatever they want since this is "teh big bad cancer" ("teh" used intentionally here).
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2 comments:
That sucks about your boyfriend's mom- both the cancer and the shitty doctors.
On a theoretical note, I had Ellen Barton- a WSU linguist- as a guest lecturer once and she told us about a study she was doing on the type of language that doctors use and how it constructs a patient's hope or despair regarding they're terminal illness. Might be interesting.
~Jenna
Yeah I read some of her articles when I was thinking about coming here, having been in and around hospitals for so many years with my dad I could identify with a LOT of what she wrote about....
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