Question of the day.

   What will you never ever do under any circumstances? 

   My answer: 

   Have chemo! A lot of people in my Mum’s family, particularly on my grandad’s side, have had cancer, and some of them decided to have chemo and/or radiation, and from what I was observing or hearing from other family members about them made me feel like it hardly made them any better, or even if it did get rid of cancer successfully, they ended up having nasty long-term complications from the treatment which didn’t sound like they were a lot better than what they were originally treated for, like some weird blood-related conditions or heart issues or constant disabling fatigue. This has always made me feel like someone must be really in love with their life or desperate to live/not die if they decide on such radical treatment, and I’ve never been extremely attached to life as such, so on some level it’s a bit difficult for me to understand. Oddly enough, when my grandad had colon cancer many years ago, despite everything looked really bad for him, with it already being quite advanced, he flat out refused to have either chemo or radiation. Many people in our family were really frustrated, thinking that he was foolishly depriving himself of a chance to live and that his refusal of these particular treatments meant he was practically going to kill himself on his own wish, some apparently even said he was selfish. But my grandad very rarely changes his mind when people want him to, and my grandma and all immediate family supported his decision. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to live or anything like that, he simply said that he didn’t want to damage the still healthy organs of his body trying to get rid of the cancer, and that if he’s meant to die soon, he likely will anyway, whether from cancer/metastases or the toll that chemo/radiation would take on his body. He only had surgery from what I remember, I don’t think he had any other treatment than that though I may be missing something since I was only about eight at that time I guess and was at the boarding school for most of the time anyway. You’d think that if his siblings fared so poorly despite being treated much more extensively, he’d have even less chances for survival, but actually, despite recovering after the surgery took him a long time, he eventually did recover fully, with no remissions so far or anything like that, and has been in very good health and he’s now in his 70’s. I think it’s quite a miracle regardless of whether he was on chemo/radiation or not, because his cancer was advanced and prior to getting sick he didn’t have the best lifestyle. I’m definitely not saying this to try to prove how chemo/radiation is always bad and no one needs it, obviously each case is different and thankfully we all get to decide for ourselves how we want to be treated when we fall ill, perhaps for someone the possible benefits are worth all the hassle. It simply shows that it’s definitely not something that will work for everyone. But as for me personally, as I suppose many of you who are regulars here will be able to figure out, or maybe you even already know it from me, my reason for never ever wanting to undergo chemotherapy if I ever end up having cancer is that it makes you vomit. If you’re a newbie here, I’m emetophobic and vomit is one of the things that scare me most. I really cannot imagine what sort of extreme circumstances I would have to be in, what would have to be happening to me to cause me to undergo a treatment with such high risk of vomit. Even if I were so extremely sick that I’d figure out that what I’m sick with is a lot worse than vomit, I’d probably first try out any other treatment options that would be available to me which wouldn’t carry the risk of that side effect with them or in which it would be lower. 

   What’s such a thing for you? 🙂 

Advertisement