I'm the cartoonist who did "Mom's Cancer," pointed this way by a couple of you (hi, Cindi and Snowflake). I appreciate the comments very much, especially from a group so involved and knowledgeable.
I just wanted to touch on one thing, about the sequence where I wrote about smokers "deserving" lung cancer. I don't really believe anyone deserves such an awful disease; what I was trying to show was the anger that made me want to slap cigarettes out of people's hands and yell at them for being idiots. I wanted to drag every single one of them to my mother's bedside and say, "Is this what you want? Because it's where you're headed!" And I wanted to ask my mother, "How could you not see this coming, and why didn't you do something to stop it?" I know it's not a particularly rational or compassionate response, but I thought I needed to show it honestly even though, frankly, I knew it didn't make me look very good. A lot of patients' family members have written to me to confess that they felt the same but were afraid or ashamed to say so.
I hope that explains my thinking a bit. I'll stand by that strip as an accurate view of how I felt in that situation on that day, but add that most of the time I try to be a better person than that.
Best to you all,
Brian
