Since it started that a family member of mine has cancer, there’s this thing that keeps happening every so often, where myself or someone else in the family shares this fact with someone outside the family, whether it is a friend of a friend or a near stranger or what, and the conversation goes something like: “I’m sorry about that. I lost xyz family member to cancer.” Sometimes more than one person who they lost.

It makes a kind of sense if I look into number of Yankees getting cancer, but here’s the weird part of it: prior to this happening, I was rarely hearing about people getting cancer. I knew it was a thing, but it wasn’t like I would regularly hear that someone has had it / lost someone to it. In one case for sure, it’s a thing where the person simply never brought it up to me that they knew someone who battled cancer until I first brought it up to them that I knew someone battling cancer. I suppose it’s not much of a conversation starter and some people can be big on medical privacy and all, but still. It’s not like these are people who are unwilling to volunteer it when you bring up your instance of it happening first. My hypothesis so far is it has something to do with individualism, that people are viewing it as this largely private fight they’re supposed to do alone with close family. But having seen what the day to day of that looks like, the caregiver people suddenly have to take on, it really puts into sharp relief the need for community that can relieve some of the burden and help people adjust; which goes for any kind of life hardship, not just cancer. The impression I’m getting is that people are generally taking it on with little help and are really struggling as a result.