Connect
← Return to No. Prostate Cancer is not the “good one”
Discussion
No. Prostate Cancer is not the “good one”
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: 6 days ago | Replies (53)Comment receiving replies
I really appreciate this post. It articulates one of the main reasons I have been so defensive about the inevitable "what kind of cancer is it" questions. My assumption is that the reaction will be that I'm lucky to have the "good one", statistically speaking, and then I will feel compelled to explain all the reasons why mine is not good at all... why I was likely to die from it before ever reaching the recommended age for testing (and the fact that I was even tested for it at all was a complete fluke)... why my continued survival is a choice between life altering treatments vs. life altering (and life limiting) symptoms... how mine is advanced, aggressive, and invasive, and not sleepy or slow-growing or easily controlled... and so on. While I can be grateful for a "better" prognosis than some other cancers, the reality is that the treatments are helping me to extend my life, not to improve the quality of my added time. It may be a reasonable trade-off for now, but at 51, I cannot imagine continuing to live like this for decades, even if I might technically be able to. Statistics be damned; existing is not the same as living.
Replies to "I really appreciate this post. It articulates one of the main reasons I have been so..."
Hey deku, where are you at with your treatment at this point? I remember your biopsy results being not so great.
Are you on ADT? Thanks,
Phil
Connect
I feel this in my increasingly radioactive bones. There’s something especially maddening about having to justify your own suffering because the branding on your cancer isn’t tragic enough to make it into a Lifetime movie. Prostate? You’ll be fine. Just a little hormonal tinkering, a few searing beams to the nether regions, maybe a chemical castration or two - no biggie, right?
There’s no such thing as the “good cancer.” There’s just cancer that pretends to be polite until it breaks into your house, rearranges your life, and casually tells you you’re lucky it didn’t bring friends. And the treatments. A true smorgasbord of indignities: from hot flashes that would embarrass the sun to a libido so dead it has a gravestone.
You're not being dramatic. You’re being accurate. You’re living in the absurdity of a world that asks you to smile because your misery didn’t come with a skull and crossbones. If you ever need a comrade in this existentially ridiculous trench, I’m here — hormone-depleted, side-effect riddled, and radiated... but with a very dry towel for the next person who gets misty-eyed about your “good cancer.”