bucket list

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and here's the whole calendar, if you're interested:

• November ~ Lung Cancer, Pancreatic Cancer;
• October ~ Breast Cancer;
• September ~ Prostate Cancer, Childhood Cancer, Ovarian Cancer, Gynecologic Cancer, Leukemia and Lymphoma;
• June ~ Men's Cancer;
• May ~ Women’s Cancer, Skin Cancer; 
• March ~ Colorectal Cancer.

May is Cancer Research Month, April is Cancer Control Month, January is Cervical Cancer Screening Month, and we have a number of holidays of less than a month:

• Coaches vs. Cancer Awareness Weekend (January);
• World Cancer Day (February);
• Daffodil Days (March);
• Minority Cancer Awareness Week (April 18-24);
• Melanoma Monday (May);
• Women’s Cancer Awareness Day (Mother’s Day);
• National Cancer Survivors Day (June);
• Men’s Cancer Awareness Day (Father’s Day);
• Mammography Day (October);
• Coaches vs. Cancer Classic (November).

Hold on, is this a disease or a spectator sport? This cancer is just one great big celebration of wonderfulness, all year long.

You may know that it's not politically correct to refer to a cancer patients as cancer patients. Instead, they're cancer survivors. Well, that's what I thought too, but now we're no longer survivors either. The latest buzzwords have turned us into "champions" or "warriors."

We warrior-champions are supposed to maintain a hysterically positive outlook, to believe that we are going to beat our cancer and never, never ever, let a shred of doubt enter our consciousness. Bring on the cheerleaders!

We're supposed to live every minute of every day to the fullest, to spend quality time with our loved ones, to tour Europe, to go skydiving, sign up for ballroom dancing lessons and take up mountain-climbing.

It's expected that we all have a bucket list of things we want to do before we "kick the bucket" (die), and that we spending every day working on the list, doing all those adventureous things we always wanted to do but never got around to.

I don't know who came up with these rules for living with a terminal illness, but it sure wasn't the guy puking up his guts after yet another chemo treatment, or the woman nearly comatose from painkillers while she recovers from yet another surgery.

First of all, when you have cancer, you're not normally a happy ball of energy and enthusiasm every day. Sometimes you're sick, sometimes you're tired. And most of the time you're sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Then there's the inconvenient little truth that cancer devastates you not only physically but financially. Even if you have fabulous medical insurance that covers all your treatment expenses (many don't), you're likely missing a lot of work and not getting paid for it. You may find yourself unemployed. You may find yourself on welfare. Yet, you're supposed to be booking that Carribbean cruise.

Never mind all that. Let's pretend that you feel healthy and you're independently wealthy. Off to climb Everest then? Afraid not. Cancer is a time-consuming disease, with an endless schedule of appointments for bloodwork, x-rays, examinations, CT Scans and follow-ups. Unless you live in a major centre, travel is involved.

We're caught up in a machine, and it's a machine built to raise money for cancer research. Yes, funding for cancer research is a good thing, but let's cut the cancer patient some slack. Opps, I mean cancer champion. Let's not use the person as a success story to support the fundraising cause, because odds are he won't be a success story.

Cancer treatments, and thus the prognosis, are improving, but cancer has been the top killer in Canada since 2007, and one of three people gets cancer. Let's look at some more statistics:

The five-year survival rate for "cancer warriors" diagnosed in 2004-2006 is 62% of people not diagnosed with cancer. A diagnosis in 1998-2000 was 60%, so an improvement is being shown.

Let's look at the five-year survival rate for individual cancers. The percentage figure is the number of people out of one hundred who will survive for five years:

• Thyroid cancer ~ 98%
• Testicular cancer ~ 95%
• Prostrate cancer ~ 96%
• Skin melanoma ~ 90%
• Breast cancer ~ 87%.
• Bladder cancer ~ 73%
• Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma ~ 63%
• Colorectal cancer ~ 63%
• Brain cancer, ages 15-44 ~ 58%
• Leukemia ~ 54%
• Ovarian cancer ~ 42%
• Stomach cancer ~ 24%
• Liver cancer ~ 17%
• Lung cancer ~ 16%
• Esophageal cancer ~ 13%
• Brain cancer, ages 65-74 ~ 9%
• Pancreatic cancer ~ 6%

These figures are for early-stage diagnosis, and unfortunately not everyone is diagnosed quickly enough to meet the five-year survival percentage. For example, of 100 people diagnosed with lung cancer that has spread, only three will survive for five years. The average survival for someone diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer is 1-3 years and, if they refuse treatment, only 6-9 months.

This year, over 76,000 people in Canada will die of cancer (over a quarter of them from lung cancer) and almost 174,000 new cases will be diagnosed.

But we're not patients and we're not survivors, we're fucking warriors and champions, and we're not going to think about dying of cancer, and we're going to put together a bucket list of adventures and other fun things to do.

But, if you can, please donate to cancer research. It's not going nearly as well for them as they'd like us to think, in spite of all the cheerleaders.