It does, doesn't it. Fear is right up there in the clouds and so many people live with the fear of cancer without ever having it.
People who have developed it feel they can't talk about it, and friends sometimes drop away as if it is catching.
It seems to take courage to talk about it and in many instances people turn away and don't want to know.
Yet out in the big world there are other illnesses just as dangerous and terminal and we barely give them a thought until they hit us.
We can have heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, liver failure... and Oh, the list goes on and on and yet do we live in fear of these things?
We don't even live in fear of car accidents. We go out every day in our cars and face the reality that we could so easily have an accident, and yet do we think seriously of this every time we turn on the engine?
I had a friend who went into hospital for a knee operation and, thanks to the anaesthetist she developed Golden Staph in her lower back. It was internal and it took ten years for it to kill her!!
We go into hospital and we believe we are safe - yet we are no safer there than on the roads or even in our own bodies.
So why is cancer such a fearful thing? What makes it just the worst possible thing that people can imagine happening to them? Why would someone opt to die rather than face it?
Interesting isn't it - any ideas?
