Wow, your words certainly are powerful and true.
When I posted on a Melanoma board a few months ago, I got overwhelming responses about how other people blamed the people that were diagnosed, as if they had sat in tanning booths every day for years and thus deserved it. What you said about people autmoatically thinking that a lung cancer victim was a chronic smoker just shows the fact that in America (and elsewhere), popular culture remains ignorant about lung cancer, and cancer in general.
I believe this is because people have not yet made the change from believing that cancer is always a death sentence to believing that cancer is a disease with options for treatment, in many cases. Because people do not talk about cancer, someone who is recently diagnosed becomes isolated and alone, separated from those they care about, because no one around them is dealing with cancer!
You also mentioned another point that I realized after doing just a few interviews: cancer affects so many other people besides the person who has it. I was so taken by this that I changed the format of the book to accomodate the opinions, experiences and challenges of people who were close to a person who had cancer, instead of basing the book exclusively on interviews with people who had cancer.
The great thing about writing the book is that it is based on other people's stories - my role is simply that of a "facilitator." One reason that this is good is that each new person I interview adds another viewpoint, another opinion, and ultimately shapes and progresses the book. The interviews have been so incredibly interesting, to hear the similarities in people's reactions to different types of cancer, yet also to discover significant differences between the types of cancer. And ultimately, each new interview and opinion widens the scope of the book and sheds light on new issues.
Thank you for your response, it was very thought provoking and powerful. Which is what I feel the book needs to be, as well as a comfort to those recently diagnosed who hear another person's stories and realize that somebody else has been down a similar path. Thanks again for the feedback!
-Kevin-
