I Guess Your Online MBA Didn’t Include Sensitivity Training
Oh man, misery doesn’t just love company, misery stands outside company’s window holding a boombox over misery’s head. I’ve got an acute case of testiculo-oncolous solidarity (mine was a well-contained T2 lesion of seminoma, what was yours?):
When I had my testicle removed, the doctors refused to let me keep it in a little jar. Which was probably pretty smart on their part. Because I swear to fucking Christ, the next person who tells me that a diet rich in leafy greens and condescending self-help would have prevented the whole thing would catch that severed testicle right in the face.
It would have been nice to know that I should have been putting “Eat, Pray, Love” into a VitaMix with a bunch of wheatgrass juice and drinking a big glass of it every day for a decade before I got sick. Instead, I ate right, exercised, and got sick anyway. I don’t think all the sunshine and yoga in the world is going to grow that sucker back.
Let me share my experience. When I told my manager that I’d have to go through chemo, the very first thing she said was, “Are you juicin’?”
“Come again?”
“Wheatgrass. They’re gonna pump poison into you, Scott! Ya gotta be juicin’.”
“Um, thanks, but I think I’ll follow whatever advice the doctors give me.”
“Well do ya at least have accident insurance?” She sold insurance on the side, I should mention. “They don’t even ask if you have cancer first! It’d really come in handy if you tripped and fell, or if you hurt yourself in the kitchen, or if you got into a car accident.”
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. How about I get back to you later.”
“Do you have brothers? They gotta get cancer insurance. You know they give ya $10,000 right when you get diagnosed? It’s just for the inconvenience of it. And I can get you some good deals. You should have them call me.”
I suppose these could have been the most helpful things she could think to say. I also suppose that someone less good-humored would have thrown a right cross and devised something unpleasant to do with all the letter openers that were lying around the office.
But it’s nice to laugh about it now.
