I am posting this publicly, since others here have felt the need to jump in and take sides over something that I think Kate and I were and are quite capable of resolving respectfully between ourselves, but I am also sending a PM to Kate since she may not be reading here.

Kate, I really appreciate your apology. I realize that there was no bad intention behind what you said and I apologize myself if what I said made you feel as though I thought there was. I think things are so tricky here because we've all had a very bad hand dealt to us in terms of getting oral cancer to begin with and one of our natural ways of coping (I mean as human beings--this is the area of psychology in which I trained) is to find a group of people or a person or two who are suffering more than us and think to ourselves "well at least I'm not having to go through that". And in fact doing that increases our gratitude for what we do have and that is a good thing.

The hard thing, which has really been brought hom to me here at times, is that because there is so much that is totally beyond our control when we have cancer, it is also easy to come to believe that you (I mean you generally here, not you Kate) didn't suffer that other fate entirely because of something you did have control over (you chose a better doctor, had a better attitude, were more stubborn, fought harder). Although all those things DO make a difference I believe, there are also people who chose good doctors, fought hard, were stubborn, and didn't get the good outcome (they can;t eat like me, or they get a recurrence) and when you (and now I am speaking from my personal experience here) are on THAT end of things and a witness to people who got the good outcome doing what is natural in terms of being grateful they aren't in your group and taking what credit they can that they didn't end up there, it can feel very unfair. Even when it is not at all meant that way.

Perhaps I am "oversensitive" about remarks that are very negative towards being phsyically dependent on a tube or about having to eat nothing but liquids but I really don't think amnyone who hasn't walked in my shoes for the last three years AFTER my OC treatment --which were not years of passive acceptance of this but of constant painful surgery and physical therapy to fight this--can judge what I've been through either or how those remarks make me feel. And my only intent in my post to you was just to raise that awareness. Again, I didn't at all think there was any intentional meanness there.

I agree with Deb here that your perspective here is very valuable and valued and I hope if you take a break (which I too have done) that you come back.

Nelie