Another sad day

After all I've had to say about cancer charities recently, it's ironic that yesterday I heard that the daughter of a friend of my parents had died of a brain tumour the previous day. As well as being terribly sad that one of my contemporaries didn't survive her encounter with cancer, it reminds me how important it is that research should be properly funded. The problem, though, is compassion fatigue; how can charities overcome this? I can't see an easy answer, but one thing that did strike me about the latest sad news was that the illness was never named and never mentioned. The more I encounter cancer and its consequences, the more certain I become that we need to talk about it and not pretend it isn't happening. Too often, when people die, the cause of death is cancer-related, but friends and even family are surprised to learn this. It seems that, along with death, cancer is still the great taboo in Western cultures at least; but if we don't talk about it, how are we ever going to face it down and understand why it's so important to fund cancer research?