Seipp did a blog post on this point in the early (public) days of her disease, saying that she'd never smoked and resented the presumption of those who felt compelled by reflex to ask if she had. I love that.

Ditto VP. I understand that this thing has caused a lot of pain... We've all lost friends to it. But there's a woman of my life who had a mastectomy when I was three, and I'm fifty three now.

The really low-hanging fruit on terms of public awareness is gone. Neither morbid fascinations nor tawdry sentiments should be indulged.

Seipp did a blog post on this point in the early (public) days of her disease, saying that she'd never smoked and resented the presumption of those who felt compelled by reflex to ask if she had. I love that.
Posted by: Crid [Cridcomment at Gmail] at October 16, 2012 8:08 AM
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Well, maybe if she'd started ALL her revelations, both private and public, with the statement "I've never smoked in my life," people would be a lot more humble, quiet and thoughtful about the general problem of lung cancer - not just when it happens to smokers. I don't see how that attitude change could happen any other way. It's not much of a personal sacrifice to say that every time, either.

> people would be a lot more humble, quiet and
> thoughtful about the general problem of lung
> cancer - not just when it happens to smokers.

I think it was more about that ringing sound you hear from the hilltop steeple while you're gamboling through the valley.

Not to detract from the seriousness of the topic, but that "low-hanging fruit" almost made me ruin another keyboard.

Lung cancer, not breast cancer, is the big killer of women -- and doesn't discriminate against men, either.

Breast cancer doesn't discriminate against men either. Men can get breast cancer. It's rare, but possible.

Prostate cancer, on the other hand, does discriminate.

Breast cancer has a better public relations department than any of the other cancers. I don't see professional teams festooning their uniforms with light blue or yellow in support of other cancer research.

Susan G Komen has made quite a business of selling breast cancer awareness to the masses.

Breast cancer is marketable. That's really the only reason it gets as much attention as it does.

We fellows could get somebody interested in prostate cancer treatment - if only we had a pretty place to hang the ribbon.

And a powerful demographic to appeal to.

The guys have to go it alone.

Ribbon, hell! If it only was just a ribbon. Okay, I'm a woman, I take breast cancer as seriously as I do all the other things what can happen to me (which after a while isn't all that seriously) but I am altogether tired of all the pink everywhere.

To loosely quote Steel Magnolias, it's like a Pepto Bismol factory exploded.

Yes, if all the statistics bleeding out of my radio are any indication, one of every 4 of your female friends will have/get breast cancer (never mind that applying averages to actual people doesn't make sense). Thus, we should assume that pretty much everyone over the age of 20 knows about it - or lives in an entirely male society which is doomed to extinction anyway.

I'm for cancer awareness. Why focus on the specific kind of cancer? Let's be aware when our bodies aren't functioning normally.

I've had two cancer scares. One was a lump in my abdomen which I was told could have been stray breast cancer cells (who knew that breast tissue could grew in places other than breasts?) The other scare was tubal cancer - another thing that I had never heard of (cancer of the Fallopian tubes.) Luckily, I didn't have tubal cancer, but I would want any cancer treated with care. I imagine that cancers are highly interconnected as should research and treated be.

> almost made me ruin another keyboard.

When a man reaches middle age, his obsessions from perkier times aren't so enthralling... He surrenders his firmly-held preferences. His enchantment find comfort in languid, relaxed postures, between the slowly-swinging pendula of...

OK, I got nuthin'. Didn't even see what I'd written until you point it out.

> if she'd started ALL her revelations, both private
> and public, with the statement "I've never smoked
> in my life," people would be a lot more humble

Um, I think if she'd started her "revelations" that way, the coarse people wouldn't have needed to be humble... They wouldn't have had to ask 'Could your bell be tolling for me, too?,' which was the quintessence of their inquiry. Seipp was right to call their bluff.

This seems typical of the clarity with which she pursued all her work that I read, and in all of the encounters with her that others have described. She wasn’t a friend, though she might have been... I worked with others in her life when I first got into Los Angeles. But because of the way she lived, I didn’t need to be her friend.

When I was young, I used to adore “Doonesbury,” because cartoonist Trudeau seemed fearless and sober. When asked why he didn’t get to know the figures from government and elsewhere whom he so frequently mocked, he said (paraphrase) that the whole point of their public lives was that he shouldn’t have to... He worked only with the information they gave willingly, and nothing could be more even-handed than that.

That’s how I feel about Seipp. What did I miss by not being a friend? Well, they say that she was striking beauty... but L.A. is crawling with those. I got everything I needed from her at a distance. The information she shared with readers, including some fairly personal stuff about relationships and finances, was not “revelation.” It was thoughtful and sober reflection on how to move well through the world. My humility, or lack thereof, wasn’t her problem, and she knew it.

A bell will ring for you one day. When it does, you won’t want to answer questions about whether you were nice to the guy in the belfry.

Poetic, right? Christ I'm good at this.

I'm not actively opposed to these fundraising organizations, but I don't actively support them either. I do think the catch phrases "I heart Boobies" and "Save the Ta Tas" are cute (I guess Livestrong didn't think "I heart Scrot" would generate the same reaction), but I have doubts as to how much they actually contribute to the advancement of treatments and cures.

Several people I know and love have died from cancer. My dad died in December 2001 from cancer. He was 48. More than one person has said I need to do something in his name for Relay for Life or a similar organization. I disagree. Putting his name on a lantern or plaque at a fund raising event would diminish the sum of his life as I remember it. To me he was so much more than a cancer statistic. Does that make sense?