You never really appreciate how fortunate you are, until you experience misfortune yourself, or you learn about the misfortunes of others.
I spent the other day going through a number of patient blogs on the internet.
I started when I came across They call me Galvez, which is about a 31 year old who had a brain tumor, and wrote a book about his experiences.
Then I came across The Journal of a Prize Fighter, about Duane Baily-Castro who was diagnosed with Hodgkins Disease (HD) in 2003 and had relapsed in 2005, and now is pondering the possibility of a transplant.
I reviewed a few more, until I got to a particularly depressing one about a 22 year old from Redondo Beach, CA, also diagnosed with Hodgkins Disease (HD) about 5 years ago, and had already relapsed for a third time, and has since died on May 7th of this year.
At that point I stopped searching. It was starting to get too depressing. 
The latter two were particularly depressing, because HD is supposed to have a much better prognosis than Non Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL), and is typically considered curable. (So what does that all mean for those of us with, what are considered, incurable cancers?)
Now I knew there were a lot of sick people out there, and I know how fortunate I have been, but I just thought a reality check for everyone else was in order.
So if you think your down on your luck, just try searching and reading a few cancer survivor blogs, and you’ll either feel more depressed, like I did, or you’ll realize just how lucky you are.
You might start with the ones I’ve linked to above, or the ones listed on the right sidebar of my blog.
Editor’s note: Title was changed from “Too many sick people”
