Top Three Things to Never Say to a Woman Who is Pregnant and Has Cancer

I get the feeling that people fall into one of two camps where this topic is concerned. Either they think these comments are either completely innocent or they consider it unthinkable to even consider saying or asking someone in my situation these things. So I’m going to approach this from a humorous/sarcastic standpoint, trying to avoid seriously offending anyone who may or may not have made these comments to me. But it still needs to be said, so here we go!

1) The offending question: did you know you had cancer when you got pregnant?

a.      The snarky answer: Are you freaking serious!? Yes, OF COURSE I wanted to bring an innocent child into the line of fire here! It’s not enough that MY life is at stake here, why not endanger an innocent baby in the meantime, making this WHOLE process harder on me (and the aforementioned innocent infant) than it has to be!!

b.      Real talk time: Seriously, this brings into serious question my sanity, and also raises questions as to whether someone should call child welfare on me instantaneously. It’s incredibly offensive to imply that I would intentionally do something like that, whether the person asking the question realizes it or not. Just…think first, k? K.

    2) The offending question: will any of this (treatments/tests/procedures/etc) hurt/endanger the baby?

a.      The snarky answer: Oh yeah, definitely. And? If I have to go down, might as well take someone with me!!

b.      Real talk time: everything that we have done and are going to do is only done because the benefits outweighed the risk, usually because the alternative was ME FREAKING DYING!! Believe it or not, same as me not intentionally bringing a child into the world under these conditions, I do not, in fact, exactly relish the idea of putting said child into danger during the one time this poor child is supposed to be the safest she’ll ever be in her life. The fact that she’s instead possibly in the greatest danger she’ll ever be in breaks my heart. But if we were to do nothing, the alternative is me dying, in which case she would die too. And the thought of that breaks my heart even more.

    3) Why aren’t you working/what do you even do all day?

a.      The snarky answer: Work is overrated and boring and getting cancer to get out of it seemed like so much more fun! Seriously, who wouldn’t want to stay at some battling cancer/pregnant/and treatment side effect symptoms day in and day out, all day every day!? As to what I do, obviously just take advantage of this time to be lazy all day because I’m definitely not busy fighting cancer and growing a baby and dealing with all the pain and discomfort that implies. It’s like a party every day of my life right now!

b.      Real talk time: friends, growing a baby is freaking HARD. Fighting cancer is harder. Doing both at once at the same time is nearly impossible. And I wasn’t kidding when I was talking about all the symptoms I have to deal with. In fact, my immune system is pretty much completely shot at this point in time. You see, the cancer is in my immune system, and some of my treatments compromise it even more. That was one of the deciding factors in my doctors ordering me to stay home while battling cancer. I can’t even go out very often because I have to avoid places with lots of people. (Also I’m on oxygen and going out is a huge hassle anyway, lol.)

Obviously most the time these questions are not asked from a malicious place. But they do get burdensome to answer after a while, especially the ones that unwittingly call into question my very humanity. And sometimes I don’t take offense at all if it’s coming from someone I’m close to, or if it’s obvious that they don’t mean it in a bad way and are genuinely wondering. But sometimes you can just tell it’s being asked from a place of morbid curiosity, which leaves me feeling like some circus sideshow, or just feeling like a horrible person.

So the moral of the story here is, think long and hard about whether you should be asking these questions, or at the very least think about the way you are presenting these questions.
Sometimes it’s better for everyone to just not know.