...I agree that attitude certainly helps. What I don't like is the kind of New Age belief that you somehow bring the illness on yourself because of the way you deal with life. ...
I was making Pat Robertson jokes before, but it is with this sort of thinking that he really goes overboard. His entire notion that America is a sick nation because it doesn't behave the way he thinks it should, and that G*d has abandoned us for the same reason, is an example of this lunacy.
My mother had breast cancer, back when I was in my mid-teens. She didn't get breast cancer because she was a bad person. She got breast cancer because, well, breast cancer happens.
She had a massive surgery, removing a breast and much of the lymph nodes under her arm. She also had a hysterectomy. And she survived all of that, because she believed in herself and because she wasn't a quitter. And she lived a productive and wonderful life.
Decades later, her hip shattered. A small bit of the original cancer had metastasized (sp?) to her hip, and lay dormant all that time. There was an operation, and radiation therapy, and this time it proved to be too late, as the cancer had spread this time through her body and ended her life.
She didn't quit living until the very end. It wasn't until she knew that we understood, and let her go, that she let go of her life.
The entire idea that her cancer could have been brought on by something wrong in her life is repulsive to me. She was not being punished. Cancer is simply something that happens. And no, Panni, I don't see how your mother was being punished for something, either. Those who insist on punishment have the wrong idea about life.
Either that, or they're lawyers. And I'm not sure that's not a redundancy.
