Cancer sucks. Got the news that the mother of a close coworker passed away today. Diagnosed last year with lung cancer, she was treated with radiation and chemo. Things looked OK for a while, but at the beginning of June she was supposed to go in for cataract surgery, but right before she was to have the surgery she went in for some tests and they determined that the vision problems she was having were partly due to brain cancer. The lung cancer had spread. My friend immediately went up to be with her mom and stepdad. The prognosis was grim, 4 weeks, 8 on the outside. Well, it about split the difference, as it's been about 6 weeks since that was handed down. Thankfully, my friend got to spend a lot of this time with her mom and stepdad. And it didn't exactly cut her life short, as she was 89. But cancer is cancer, and sucks is sucks, and the whole thing isn't fair. Cancer shouldn't happen. It's not natural. It's a mutation. It makes me wonder how much of the cancer is caused by our civilization's gradual progression of chemical dependency. I hate it, and of course it makes me think back three months ago to my own mother's death. I guess I would have liked to have the prognosis, to know that it was coming, but I don't really think it would have made anything easier or better. I just hate that anyone has to go through this, and that any families have to be left behind.