Hey Joppette,
Thanks for bringing up this subject. My wife and I never hesitated talking about cancer with anyone interested. It started by visiting forums like this and thus identifying with the people there. Reading their stories made it lots easier to talk about ours.
I wonder how many "lurkers" (people who read but don't post) there are out there? I bet we'd be surprised by that number. Making that first post was hard to do but once the ice was broken it made the whole cancer experience a lot less lonely.
We got on a prostate cancer forum as soon as I was dxed so logging into lung cancer forums was easy. And even though the two are vastly different in the side effects of treatment I bet that if you left out the name of the cancer, the posts would almost be interchangeable.
We told out children and relatives as soon as I was dxed. That was hard because no one likes to inflict pain on a loved one. However, we felt it would be much more painful if we didn't tell them. Then we kept them up to date all through treatment and today we still discuss it with them from time to time.
I was still working when the prostate cancer came about. I told my boss and anyone else that was interested. Ya know what? I had an instant cheering section from all my co-workers.
There are some people out there without cancer who just don't want to hear about it. That's fine with us. We never push our story on anyone. We have many friends who have various kinds of cancer. Some like to talk and others don't. We feel we have helped a number of newly dxed folks come to grips with their situation. Doing that is a very rewarding experience.
With cancer, patience is essential and attitude is everything.
Hugs to all,
Jim