I’m sorry to hear you’ve been goin through it with your dad. But, I’m also glad you got this time with him. And, eventually, I think you’ll be very glad for this time that you have gotten, too. even though I know it is very hard for you.
fireshadow - you must not have ever lived amongst he cancer support groups. "devotes’ was an excellent choice of word. He could have said ‘friends’…but it wouldn’t have conveyed that thing that the most scared people do when they find someone like Adams. Often, they cling. They become disciples. They hang on a person’s every word, even when that person maybe equally as clueless. But, you’ve read Xeni’s stuff. And how she hates Burzynski. I mean, rages about him! But, there are others who swear by the guy. Does that make her wrong? For removing hope from some who might go that direction and succeed? Or, does it just mean she has a strong opinion? See - she’s just a patient, too. She doesn’t have all the answers, any more than I’m convinced Burzynki does, or that I do. I know her writing on the subject is heavily slanted against him. And his is slanted in his own favor. She blames the Texas State Medical Board for not taking him down, I happen to know there’s been a high level of corruption there, where they’ve gone after other physicians who absolutely did not deserve it, which places the whole thing in some question, for me.
So. Tell me. Are the readers who hang on her every utterance just readers? I’m a reader. An interested reader, even. And a person who wishes her well. But I don’t just believe everything she does, and more than she does so with me. Or are they ‘devotees’? If they unquestioningly read what she says, don’t do any research of their own, and blindly follow - because she is strong in this, where they may be weak? That would pretty much qualify, I think. And even in saying that - it doesn’t speak against Xeni. I wish good stuff for her, in every regard. She has opinions. She can state them freely. Long as she presents then as only her own opinions? All good. But…I saw her writing fall apart, when she was undergoing chemo (I was not). But…what if I had been? It screws with your thought processes unmercifully - I might not have questioned then. If she says something that turns out to be wrong and I blindly follow, is she just fallible like a human, or culpable like a criminal, or maybe, she’s just out there so publicly
that it’s just easy for any error to get magnified by those who believe without questioning. (Heavy load there, Xeni! Maybe. Unless you are100% cool with just doing your best, which is about all I think anyone could ever ask.)
Now. Am I evil because I pointed out the potential for Xeni’s stuff to do actual harm at some point she’s not even presently aware of? Did I bully her? Or, did I just make a comparison to Adams, and that’s that. She KNOWS she’s human. She KNOWS people read her stuff. She writes publicly about other people. Hell - she’s writing about other cancer patients! Am I a bully now, because I wrote publicly about her? Or does she, too, have to be the freakin’ center of a media storm she probably doesn’t need because you might disagree with something I just said, or how I said it, or because Xeni somehow =cancer patient in your mind now, instead of just Xeni, slamming a living out of her keyboard as she has always done? (Best to you, girl! Really, REALLY hope you don’t mind being the example du jour.)
