the all-important first post

I've spent many weeks--oh, okay, 2 1/2--considering, and then rejecting, possible blog topics. The very first post in here has to be something of substance, before, of course, this degenerates into the morass of private jokes, whining, and reports of what I made for dinner that, face it, we all know it will. Well, you'll be ecstatic to know that just this morning the correct topic finally presented itself.

A friend was joking in e-mail about why Lance and Sheryl broke up (for context, this was in relation to a conversation about bicycle seats causing impotence) and I said that I thought the reason they broke up was that Lance was well-known to be a douche. And that, y'know, being a cancer survivor does not preclude one from in fact being a big douche. Then I realized I had a big rant tangentially related to that that's been building up for a while. Bingo! Blog topic.

There is very little that annoys me more than people being lauded as brave or heroic solely because they've had the misfortune to be afflicted with a chronic or life-threatening disease. No one chooses to contract cancer or ALS or schizophrenia or any of the other thousands of horrible medical conditions we frail humans fall prey to. It's not exactly analogous to running into a burning building to save a trapped toddler or donating a kidney so someone else can live.

On a personal level, in dealing with D's chronic illness--which he didn't choose to have and which I can firmly state we both would have been perfectly happy if we had never had to have any knowledge of--I've had many sweet, supportive people tell me, "Oh, Andrea, you're such a strong person." To which I respond mentally (not aloud, of course, 'cause my mom would reach out from beyond the grave and bitchslap me), WTF? What exactly did they think my alternative was? Is it in the realm of possibility for a parent whose kid is in the hospital for two months, with no assurance that things will ever be okay again, to just curl up in the fetal position and refuse to deal with it? Um, no. Sorry, but no.

So you get up and you do what you have to do, day by day, sometimes hour by hour, and you make it through. That's not strength or courage. It's survival. It's...life.

And maybe in that survival sometimes you learn a little something, get a little perspective, that makes you a tiny bit better as a person. Mostly though?

Mostly you stay as big of a douche as you ever were. I know I have.

Moral of the story? Buy one of those bicycle seats that doesn't cause impotence.

xoxo