Talking therapy

From time to time, I rant here about the fact that people don't like to talk about cancer. It is, however, I've discovered, better now than it was half a century ago. I recently realised that an elderly woman of my acquaintance must have had cancer but is totally unaware of this. I was talking to her recently and she asked about my health. I told her about my check-ups and their frequency. To my surprise - I knew she'd had a hysterectomy before I was born - she said that after her operation, she'd had to go back for check-ups for five years. She is clearly totally unaware that this is not - and never has been, according to my medical acquaintances - typical treatment after a straightforward hysterectomy where no malignancy is found.

I'm told that the most likely explanation is that her husband was informed but that at the time, the patient wasn't given the diagnosis; the next of kin made the decision about whether to pass it on. In this case, that clearly didn't happen. Well, I won't say anything - there'd be no point and it would only worry and upset my acquaintance if I were to ask her if she hadn't realised that she had cancer. I wish, though, that I'd known about this - it would have made my experience a little less scary if I'd been aware that someone I'd known all my life had had the same diagnosis as me and was still in good health more than half a century later!

To know that even that half century ago, my cancer was curable would have made a huge difference to my experience!