Brian...here goes. You may get pissed off and kick me off this site. I hope not, because I have the utmost respect for what you have given us in this forum.

But.....I take offense at the fact that you seem to "assume" that we brought this disease on ourselves. Yes, many might have, including my husband who drank and smoked too much, but the oncologist has told us time and again to not blame his alcohol and tobacco use on this disease. The abuse has been something that he overcame years ago.

There are people who have never smoked or drank who are fighting this disease. There was a 4 year old child on our local news who died this week of the same affliction. How do you dismiss this?

In the law of averages, does 25% not mean anything to you? And for the record, yes, there are very stringent laws that protect you in a restaurant setting. Just ask any of us who own one. The health department is there for you once a friggin' month! There are many laws who protect your health.

On a government front, my nephew has been in Baghdad for three months.....protecting your ass from something highly more deadly than any restaurant fungus. Have you given him any credit? And as far as the car you are driving....well you bought it. Did you not make sure there was a warranty on it? Stupid if you ask me.

We might have given ourselves a bigger chance of catching this disease, but did you know about the symptoms and what to do about them before you were condemned for past behavior? I know we weren't.

Hindsight is always 20/20. But how many of us still wear glasses?

There are shitty doctors out there. Thank God, it seems like you never had to deal with them.

I've sat in the waiting room with my husband for over two hours while a hospice patient was falling out of his wheelchair waiting for help. We actually caught him a couple times before he hit the floor. All he needed was blood counts and his wife was beside herself. It was all she could do to get him in the cramped waiting room in his wheelchair. It was so bad, that when my husband's oncologist came in, I blew up.

He had NO FRIGGIN' clue what was going on in his own waiting room...where my husband had been or where he was at in his treatment. Just took my husband's weight, looked at his damn blood results from the week prior and expected me to put up with it. I WENT OFF....told him exactly what I thought of his inhumanity and watched as his nurses came off the floor a foot when I slammed the door to my husband's exam room and went to the parking lot to cry.

Do you even care what his response was? "His office was getting too busy. We would have to put up with it!!!!!!!" Brian, this is one of the leading oncologist's in the Tri-state area. (John-Hopkins, included)

The hell with them. They don't care. At least some of them don't. Don't try to tell us that it's our fault. We didn't ask for this shit.

This is bull. We are here to fight the same enemy. Get over it.
You are no damn better than the rest of us. You've just survived longer than most.

Mandi

P.S. Screw your "bell curve"

P.S.S. What "real" questions would you rather address? Your mortality?