The Science Fiction Fan's Guide to Cancer
Dec. 2nd, 2012 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricevermicelliOkay, so let's settle some questions first:
1. Am I a fan?
Well, I'm a girl. So, depending on where you go for your definition of "fan", no. I'm just a poser who loved Star Trek before she had a tv. I read Heinlein with a flashlight after lights out. In my socially awkward youth, when guys who played tabletop games asked me out, I was mostly just crazy surprised to be asked. I did not mock them. I took some of Heinlein's philosophies about sexual relationships way too much to heart back in the day, and if you missed your chance back in that part of my life, you might be sorry. I took programming classes in Pascal, back when that was all my high school offered. I've LARPed. I have worn garb to SCA events. I have made garb to wear to SCA events. I knit myself a sweater with the Superman shield on each sleeve, even though the effort made me want to stab my own eyes out. I have watched a variety of television shows, read a bunch of comics, bought and read and talked about science fiction and fantasy in a variety of contexts.
All of that seems like enough cred to hold up to the cardinal sin of dual X chromosomes, so if you're a fan, you're my fucking tribe and you're going to have to learn to like it.
2. Do I have cancer?
Wow yeah. I have cancer.
So here's what you need to know about cancer:
1. Fairly early in the process of treating you for cancer, medical professionals will stop pretending that they can somehow make this a comfortable process. This is really startling when it happens. They tried to convince me that they could arrange for me to have a baby without anything really hurting, and that was sort of a big lie, but at least, with the baby, they had a plan. With cancer, they do not have a plan. Suffering is a condition of continued existence, but it's temporary.
2. After you've had cancer for a while, you start to get kind of comparative about the suffering. You'll read about famous people with cancer and note how much less crap they seem to have to go through, compared to you. Or you might read the Breast Cancer Awareness issue of Parenting Magazine and notice that you are having more chemo then all of the people they feature. You may feel kind of macho. Like these people just have candy-ass cancer, and your suffering is greater. Blogging about this feeling will get your ass kicked.
3. Porn stars get their boob enhancements as one-day outpatient procedures. Porn stars start with all of their original skin. This is two ways in which you are not like a porn star.
4. Some kinds of chemotherapy screw up your peripheral nerve function. So you might be able to stick your fingers in boiling water without feeling it. Do not recreate Daryl Hannah's demonstration that she is a replicant.
5. In order to facilitate chemotherapy, doctors may install some mechanical parts. You're a cyborg! You will have to carry a special cyborg info card. You're a cyborg AND you're being oppressed!
6. Once installed, your cyborg parts are yours, and yours alone. You don't have to grant access to your cyborg parts if you don't want to. Just because you let someone have access once does not mean you have to let them have it again. You might have let, say, the ER have access to your cyborg parts and found you didn't care for the experience. If that happens, next time the ER wants access, you can say no. Using your words and your voice is an important way to stay safe.
7. Radiation does not make you radioactive. It makes you irradiated. Irradiated is a lot like sunburnt. If the sun did not give you superpowers, your odds for radiation-induced superpowers are not promising.
8. Radioactive dyes make you radioactive. Really do not go to the airport without the info cards on these.
9. You don't owe it to anyone to pass for normal if you don't want to.
10. Everyone will make the obvious joke about superpowers. The obvious joke about superpowers is better then the alternatives.
1. Am I a fan?
Well, I'm a girl. So, depending on where you go for your definition of "fan", no. I'm just a poser who loved Star Trek before she had a tv. I read Heinlein with a flashlight after lights out. In my socially awkward youth, when guys who played tabletop games asked me out, I was mostly just crazy surprised to be asked. I did not mock them. I took some of Heinlein's philosophies about sexual relationships way too much to heart back in the day, and if you missed your chance back in that part of my life, you might be sorry. I took programming classes in Pascal, back when that was all my high school offered. I've LARPed. I have worn garb to SCA events. I have made garb to wear to SCA events. I knit myself a sweater with the Superman shield on each sleeve, even though the effort made me want to stab my own eyes out. I have watched a variety of television shows, read a bunch of comics, bought and read and talked about science fiction and fantasy in a variety of contexts.
All of that seems like enough cred to hold up to the cardinal sin of dual X chromosomes, so if you're a fan, you're my fucking tribe and you're going to have to learn to like it.
2. Do I have cancer?
Wow yeah. I have cancer.
So here's what you need to know about cancer:
1. Fairly early in the process of treating you for cancer, medical professionals will stop pretending that they can somehow make this a comfortable process. This is really startling when it happens. They tried to convince me that they could arrange for me to have a baby without anything really hurting, and that was sort of a big lie, but at least, with the baby, they had a plan. With cancer, they do not have a plan. Suffering is a condition of continued existence, but it's temporary.
2. After you've had cancer for a while, you start to get kind of comparative about the suffering. You'll read about famous people with cancer and note how much less crap they seem to have to go through, compared to you. Or you might read the Breast Cancer Awareness issue of Parenting Magazine and notice that you are having more chemo then all of the people they feature. You may feel kind of macho. Like these people just have candy-ass cancer, and your suffering is greater. Blogging about this feeling will get your ass kicked.
3. Porn stars get their boob enhancements as one-day outpatient procedures. Porn stars start with all of their original skin. This is two ways in which you are not like a porn star.
4. Some kinds of chemotherapy screw up your peripheral nerve function. So you might be able to stick your fingers in boiling water without feeling it. Do not recreate Daryl Hannah's demonstration that she is a replicant.
5. In order to facilitate chemotherapy, doctors may install some mechanical parts. You're a cyborg! You will have to carry a special cyborg info card. You're a cyborg AND you're being oppressed!
6. Once installed, your cyborg parts are yours, and yours alone. You don't have to grant access to your cyborg parts if you don't want to. Just because you let someone have access once does not mean you have to let them have it again. You might have let, say, the ER have access to your cyborg parts and found you didn't care for the experience. If that happens, next time the ER wants access, you can say no. Using your words and your voice is an important way to stay safe.
7. Radiation does not make you radioactive. It makes you irradiated. Irradiated is a lot like sunburnt. If the sun did not give you superpowers, your odds for radiation-induced superpowers are not promising.
8. Radioactive dyes make you radioactive. Really do not go to the airport without the info cards on these.
9. You don't owe it to anyone to pass for normal if you don't want to.
10. Everyone will make the obvious joke about superpowers. The obvious joke about superpowers is better then the alternatives.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 03:12 am (UTC)You are completely awesome. Even if your superpowers were not given by this yellow sun. :-)
You are awesome
Date: 2012-12-03 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 10:49 pm (UTC)Also, there's a cape.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 04:35 pm (UTC)Go you!
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 05:24 am (UTC)But given that the argument exists, I like your answer.
And I'm pretty sure that writing like this has always been your superpower; no medical activation needed.
Newt
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 05:32 am (UTC)You make an awesome cyborg. Even if the process hasn't resulted in any additional superpowers, you still deserve the shirt.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 11:05 pm (UTC)But also, this is a problem I deal with exclusively online so far. I confess to worrying about the next con I plan to attend because I'll basically be taking a whole new body out for a spin, and I can't guess how much it will make a difference.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 05:47 am (UTC)Anyone who's witnessed your kitchen + kid + yarn + ... prowess will agree with me, I'm sure.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 06:45 am (UTC)And +1 to what
--Beth
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 09:57 am (UTC)I support you in all your life choices *love*
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 01:08 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 04:14 pm (UTC)Good to hear from you.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-07 05:05 am (UTC)to which a few younger people who heard this would attempt to turn the lights out on him, or catch him sleeping, to see if this were true :)
#
no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 03:44 pm (UTC)Still, I'm not going to risk getting bitten by a radioactive spider anytime soon.