Saturday, September 19, 2009

Is it worth it?

I had a conversation this afternoon with a dear friend of mine, who was trying to decide if she should continue a difficult relationship with someone she loves. I was being completely unhelpful by saying that I would not judge her in the slightest if she stayed, but that I wanted to impress upon her just how difficult things could get if she did stay. At the end of the conversation, we realized that what it came down to was "Was it worth it?". I had no answer for her and I just felt really bad about the situation she was in.

What was really interesting was that 2 months prior, I was telling her how GREAT relationships could be. She was hesitant to fall in love, especially because she was very aware of a difficult relationship that I was dealing with/ending. But I continued to INSIST that it was totally worth it. The heart-ache, the pain, the emotional insecurity was a totally fair price because being in love, being in a relationship was AWESOME. I used the analogy that when you are in a relationship, you are greater than the sum of your parts. 1+1=3. But today, one plus one equaled negative 6.

Then I thought about my other two friends who were dealing with similar situations. They truly loved the person they were with, but there were external factors that were literally tearing them up inside. All of their emotional energy was being spent on their relationships, as they struggled to decide if it was worth it. Was it worth hurting my parents, was it worth changing my beliefs, was it worth hurting myself? What do I believe, how important are these things to me, how important is this relationship to me, I don't want to hurt him, but maybe I have to, can I handle this discrepancy in our feelings, what is right, what is wrong? Do I even want to put this much energy into this relationship? A great amount of stress and anxiety was expressed. It was very difficult to watch.

And always it would come down to that same question: Is it worth it? To be honest, I don't know. As I watched my friends in pain, and I thought about my own pain and emotional stress that I was experiencing over a failed relationship, I thought "Nope, we should all just get vibrators instead." But of course my friend pointed out the conversation we had had 2 months ago and expressed he facetious disappointment at my cynicism.

But the fact remained, NONE of us knew if it was worth it! I mean, at the end of the day, what was gained from the heartache? I look at past relationships, seeing what was gained from the heartache and I find that I had nothing. I don't look back at the breakup with my first love and think "Wow, I learned a lot from that." I think "God that was an awful time, I'm glad that's over." I look at what I'm going through right now and I think, "Can this PLEASE be over now?!" It's just awful, ticking off the days until you feel nothing. But even after the months and years have done their job and healed your wound, you find that two years later you scrape your heart against something new and it breaks wide open again; maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, but still there, reminding you of the pain that shadows all the goodness that you felt when you were in love.

I would like to sit here and say that we learn things from each relationship, and that being in love is so worth it. Two months ago I did. But as I watch my friends struggle with their decision to end or continue their relationships, I just can't muster up the optimism. All I think is "No. No it's not worth it. It's just too hard. It's better to love your friends, your family, yourself, and leave the romance to poems and movies. Because the reality is much more bloody, much more damaging, and simply much harder than the movies would like to admit."

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Comparing Cancer Survival Rates

This is for you Kris ;)

My sister told me to compare the cancer survival rates in this country compared to countries with socialized health care. Because I was thoroughly sick of doing my homework, I did and this is what I found:

Survival rates of breast cancer patients
Sweden:82%
Japan: 81.6%
Australia:80.7%
Canada: 82.5%
USA: 84%

The US is slightly better, but I hardly think it's a smoking gun. Lets look at some more cancers:

Colon Cancer
Canada: Men-56.1%, Women-58.7%
USA: Men-60.1%, Women-60.1%
Australia: Men-57.8%, Women-57.7%
Japan: Men-63.0%, Women-57.1%

Rectal Cancer
Canada: Men-53.1%, Women-58.7%
USA: Men-56.9%, Women-59.8%
Japan: Men-58.2%, Women-57.6%
Australia: Men-54.8%, Women-59.6%

Definitely not a smoking gun. There is also a table in this article that shows that France comes in at number one for survival rates for women with rectal AND Colon cancer. (Cuba is in there too but they symbolically throw out the data by mentioning that the numbers were inflated and unrealistic and probably doctored by the government).

Now here's what's REALLY interesting about this study. They did a detailed analysis of survival rates in America based on several different factors including race and location. What I find very interesting is that African Americans (who are typically part of the urban poor) had significantly lower survival rates across the board.

Colon Cancer
Black: 51-52%
White: 61%

Rectal
Black: Men-47.4%, Women-49.4%
White: Men-57.3%, Women-60.4%

Breast
Black: 70.9%
White: 84.7%

Now to me, THAT is a smoking gun. That is why we need universal health care. Because large groups of people do not have access to health care because they don't have the money or a good enough job to provide benefits. We need to prevent categorical discrimination across the board and providing universal health care is a decent place to start.


* All information in this blog comes from an article in the Lancet Oncology published by Michel Coleman and company (lots of company, too many to include here). Dr. Coleman is a professor of epidemiology and vital statistics. His web page is here http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/people/coleman.michel.

The link to his article is here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6W85-4T0WDNG-1-8&_cdi=6645&_user=456938&_orig=browse&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F2008&_sk=999909991&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlW-zSkWA&md5=e52d016d278422ebcdf0b2b034167e83&ie=/sdarticle.pdf *