It seems like when you're diagnosed with cancer (or maybe any illness), a lot of people want to tell you about someone else they know who has/had something similar. While I was awaiting my bone marrow transplant, two of these stories stand out, paticularly since they were told to my husband by friends wanting to reassure him I'd be okay.

The first went something like this: "My brother-in-law had a bone marrow transplant last year and it went very well." When asked how he's doing now: "Oh, he ended up aspirating orange juice and dying while he was in rehab afterwards but the transplant was no problem."

The second was equally uplifting, something like this: "My friend had a transplant, his cancer was cured, and he was doing great. Then he got hit by a truck and was killed instantly."

We still wryly quote these a lot to each other, especially with my recent diagnosis with an unrelated base of tongue cancer. All this time I was worried about relapse or treatment related issues and instead got hit by a [figurative] truck.

The other thing I hated post treatment was being told how great I looked when I had no hair, swollen red eyes, and mottled skin with alternating patches of hyperpigmentation and no pigmentation. But hey, I lost a lot of weight. Argggg. No one ever told me I looked great before I got sick. Gee, if only I'd known, I'd have gotten cancer sooner. Yeah right.

The last one has already been mentioned, too - "Everything happens for a reason." My standard replies are either, "No it doesn't - a lot of things are just random," or better yet, "Really? Then some of the reasons are bad."