You know, I don't have any particular issue with people who pray and meditate and change their diet...I think it gives people some sense of sanity to be able to control something when their bodies go haywire.

But there's something odd about forgoing medicine for "natural" remedies.

Hydrofluoric acid is natural. Have a cup! Have a gory death. You're surrounded by radiation. It's everywhere. Welcome to the fucking universe. It's totes natural!

In addition, cancer is also natural.

What Tom said. But they poison the cancer!

A woman my mom works with was telling her about her brother -- he came home one day to find his wife dead, and there was a letter from her left somewhere for him to find. She'd been diagnosed with cancer a few months before, and had opted for no treatment, but also NEVER TOLD HIM. They don't have kids, either, so he's completely alone, and dealing with a hell of a lot of anger as well as grief.

My mother's on coumadin (aka warfarin ... aka rat poison). Doctor's prescription. She's 86 and looks set for a while longer.

yay poison?

Botox is a poison I can totally get behind.

Oh, my god, Amy, I can't even imagine.

Also, I found out today that my crow's feet are the product of genuine smiling and not fake smiling.

I do not understand this. I should be less wrinkly.

The moral of the story is that misery is beauty.

Have we all seen the video of two Cleverbots having a conversation? If this isn't the best thing on the internet today, I don't know what is:

Oh my God, that is amazing.

Oh, my god, Amy, I can't even imagine.

Right? I can see not wanting to spend the time left arguing, and I'm sure he would have wanted her to undergo treatment, but wow.

I just went up the ten flights of stairs to punish myself for not having gone down them on my way out for lunch.

FUCK THAT NOISE. I'm so not ready for that. I may never be.

Oh my God, Amy, the pain and rage he must be going through. That poor man. And I'm sure his wife had managed to convince herself that this was the best way, for whatever completely unreasonable reason.

But there's something odd about forgoing medicine for "natural" remedies.

Even my super-evangelical aunt doesn't kid herself for a second about how she survived her bout with cancer (non-Hodgkin's, stage 4) -- she's convinced it was a God-sent miracle, but she's also pretty damn convinced that the cancer team at Stanford and all their expertise and science and fancy poisons (and even stem cells) were a seriously huge part of the miracle, and she would go very squinty-eyed at anyone who suggested otherwise.