"Miss Manners and the Big C"

A new piece written by Christopher Hitchens, who can be very funny.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/12/hitchens-201012

I think any patient who's ever had someone - a stranger, a family member, a friend - say something inappropriate to them will enjoy it and maybe even laugh. Hitchens is a very good writer - which isn't the same as saying I agree with him on everything. (He's very opinionated and very outspoken about his opinions.)

I'm tempted to quote the whole piece, to entice you to read it. Instead I'll pick out something short:
"I’ll do the facing of hard facts, thanks. Don’t you be doing it, too."

OK, and this too:
"It’s normally agreed that the question “How are you?” doesn’t put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. So when asked these days, I tend to say something cryptic like “A bit early to say.” (If it’s the wonderful staff at my oncology clinic who inquire, I sometimes go so far as to respond, “I seem to have cancer today.”) Nobody wants to be told about the countless minor horrors and humiliations that become facts of “life” when your body turns from being a friend to being a foe: the boring switch from chronic constipation to its sudden dramatic opposite; the equally nasty double cross of feeling acute hunger while fearing even the scent of food; the absolute misery of gut-wringing nausea on an utterly empty stomach; or the pathetic discovery that hair loss extends to the disappearance of the follicles in your nostrils, and thus to the childish and irritating phenomenon of a permanently runny nose. Sorry, but you did ask ..."

Here's the main point:
"As the populations of Tumortown and Wellville continue to swell and to 'interact,' there’s a growing need for ground rules that prevent us from inflicting ourselves upon one another."

I started another periodic blog, at http://sickandwell.blogspot.com/, to help suggest some "ground rules" (see the post titled "A List of Basic Do's and Don'ts") because people often mean well but don't quite know what to say or how to help.
The blog also has "Favorite Funny Films."

Don't worry about offending me - you can say whatever you like to me. I can deflect it if need be, but I don't expect the need.
But I have heard a lot of cancer patients talk about being offended, so if I can help a bit ...

P.S. As I was almost done with writing this, Richard came by and mentioned that Hitchens has written more about his cancer - including this: "Tropic of Cancer" at http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-201009