G'day Harker, I'm with you. Lance Armstrong and his whole foundation get right up my nose. His words "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit however, it lasts forever." are absolute rubbish. It is saying that those who end up with chronic pain are quitters and have themselves to blame. If pain responsible from trauma does not subside, and it will not it unless it is managed properly, then it becomes chronic - the nerves get used to sending the pain messages and you are stuck with it. You can either undergo expensive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or you can use analgesics like morphine for the rest of your life. So it is important that pain is not ignored, but is managed properly. Pain should be one of the vital signs that are monitored when you are in hospital, it should be on the agenda of every multidisciplinary team meeting, it should be part of all correspondence between specialist and GP's. If you continue to have pain you are not a quitter, you just have not had good pain management.
I do not know what stage or how advanced Lance's testicular cancer was. But I do know that in his age group it is essentially a curable cancer - it has become so over the last forty years due to better surgery and better drug therapy, particularly combinations using the platinum drugs. Now he may have had very advanced disease, but if that is the case then he was suffering enormous medical neglect, which I doubt would be the case with an elite athlete.
Like you Harker, I object to the use of a military metaphor, as the flip side of that is if you don't get over it you didn't fight hard enough - what rubbish.
If you want to read some inspiring books there are far better ones out there. Ones that show people creating a new life for themselves, one that includes their cancer and being really inspiring.
If you are bitchy Harker, so am I so let's do it together.
Cheers
Sailor
An incorrectly identified mark is a hazard, not an aid, to navigation. Alton B. Moody