Other people with cancer

One of our earliest posts was on the Rules of Cancer, which basically consisted of staying off the Internet until you've talked to your doctor.

Once that hurdle is cleared though, get your Google-fu going because it's open season on searches.

However, having gone through a pretty intense and vaguely obscure illness myself recently has done a good job of dampening my enthusiasm for other people's health information (OPHI). Bottom line, it's irrelevant and useless. If your own damn doctor changes your diagnosis every other Tuesday, then what good is anyone else's cancer blog?

I'm breaking my own protocol here to refer y'all to one of my Internet heroes, Twisty Faster of I Blame the Patriarchy, who was diagnosed with breast cancer more than a year ago. Several brutal treatments later, she offered the following:

. . . no matter how bottom-of-the-barrel crappy your life seemed before, it was an azure-skied, gardenia-scented island in paradise compared to the balls-out nightmare into which the giant flying claw of Fate drops you when you get cancer.

Amen, sister.