Here's a silly little article about "Cancer and the Case for Gratitude," where the author takes a doctor's study of cancer patients and draws some lame conclusions. Basically she says if people would face their misfortunes with a sense of gratitude, they might not get cancer. Or at least that's what she seems to be saying. She doesn't quite connect the ridiculous dots.
Like the hundreds of cancer patients the doctor studied in this article, I faced a big-deal stressor shortly before I was diagnosed with cancer. I was laid off from my job of many years. Did my lack of gratitude about this or my failure to find a bright spot in the disease--I got cancer at 37.5 years old, people!!!--make me get cancer?
Doubt it. There's a lot of research being done on women who get breast cancer within five years of giving birth. I'd be willing to throw in with that possibility for myself, since I discovered my cancer just two years after giving birth.
But this gratitude crap? Not at all. I put it up there with the popular media's all-too-energetic theories that my weight or diet somehow caused my cancer. Again, not likely since I was premenopausal when I got my cancer and this is more an issue (but not a definite or only issue by any stretch) for much older women.
This article is glib and clearly written by someone who has not faced the disease herself. I'd suggest she be grateful for that and leave those of us who didn't get off so easily alone.
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