Tag: Huffington Post

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Strange(r) Encounters: STFU Edition

This week has been a banner week for strangers telling me what I did wrong during Donna’s cancer treatment.

Before I go any further, though, let me preface this entire post with the very real fact that Mary Tyler Dad and I have no regrets about the choices we made.  Got that?  NO REGRETS.  That is one of the few blessings we have had bestowed on us in Cancerville.

By publishing Donna’s Cancer Story on Huffington Post this year, I had hoped to reach a whole new audience and expose them to the harsh realities of pediatric cancer.  Every indication is that it is working.  And again, similar to last year, is the awkward reality that new readers are not immediately aware of Donna’s death.  Is it my responsibility to break that news? I’ve opted not to, thinking that anyone with any curiosity would visit Mr. Google to meet all their curiosity needs.

Oddly, not everyone thinks the way I do.  Yesterday I received a private message that went a little something like this:

This will sound like an attack, but I promise it is not. I heard you mention feeding her [Donna] McDonalds for breakfast and it is what made me think of what I am about to tell you. The food we put into our bodies can be the best forms of medicine or the slowest forms of poison. McDonalds is toxic. My young boys actually broke out in a rash from eating there and as far as we know they have no known allergies.   I am by no means a doctor and I would strongly advise you to still listen to your doctor, but it is worth looking into, right? I think it could really save your daughter’s life. Please feel free to ask me for more information if you are interested.

Sigh.  Where do I even begin?  It’s pretty much a given that when someone starts out an exchange with the words, “This will sound like an attack, but I promise it is not,” you’re about to be attacked.  Prepare for battle.  I believe this individual was not acting maliciously in any way, shape, or form.  I also believe, knowing that said individual was under the impression that my girl was still alive, that telling me that McDonald’s was toxic poison was crossing the proverbial line.

Trust me when I say that Cancer Parents know from toxic poison.  Chemotherapy is toxic poison.  We know this because it comes in industrial grade plastic, is handled with RNs wearing blue gloves (and there are always two RNs present for chemo administration), and is thrown out in bright red biohazard bins that you learn not to go near.

Admittedly, McDonald’s is crap masquerading as nutrition.  We all know that, right?  Yes, we can all agree that it is not best for our bodies.  Damn you, delicious chemicals (shaking fist in air for greater effect)!

But, honestly, believing, as this person did, that Donna was still alive, was it really necessary to personally message me with the newsflash that McDonald’s was not the healthy diet my daughter needed?  I think not.  Was it really necessary to “strongly advise me” to still listen to our doctor, as if a stranger’s note on Facebook would vastly alter the course of our daughter’s cancer treatment?  And was it really necessary to speculate on what could and could not save my daughter’s life, three years after her death?  That a side of McDonald’s french fries two days after brain surgery would be the tipping point between life and death?

I just sigh and shake my head at the stupidity.

When I posted this on Facebook, which is where all daily frustrations land these days, there was a thread 260 comments long, bashing the unthinking soul who dared question my nutrition choices.  It seems I am not alone in getting worked up over some silly nonsense posed by a stranger.  Sure, there was the occasional voice of support confirming that McDonald’s is indeed unhealthy fare, but pretty much universally, folks agreed the well intentioned stranger should have kept their hands off the keyboard and their mouth closed.

Tomorrow I will explore another exchange with a stranger about Donna’s cancer treatment.  In September, I am like a freaking magnet for this stuff.  That tete a tete, though, is a little more nuanced, a little more interesting.  Stay tuned.

Strange(r) Encounters:  Listen and Learn Edition

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Social Media 101: My Barbie Mea Culpa

Five days ago I wrote a post about the bald Barbie facebook page that had been crossing my feed quite a bit in the two weeks prior to that.  As the mom of a girl who died of cancer, lots of folks assumed I would be interested. That was a safe assumption.  Receiving those posts from friends and readers didn’t annoy me — it was clear that folks thought I would appreciate the idea.

What did annoy me was the idea itself.  Barbie is an icon of unattainable and unhealthy ideals of beauty and she becoming a plastic symbol now preaching acceptance of young girls like my daughter made my stomach turn.  YES, children with cancer need acceptance and support, but I stand firm that they need research more.  Dolls are great and can be therapeutic.  I get it.  But one in five of the girls diagnosed with cancer will die.  Their parents and families will forever mourn their passing.  Much in the same way that plastic Barbie  dolls will forever clog our landfills.

So I wrote about it.  Sitting in my pajamas, click clacking away on my lap top, Mary Tyler Son blessedly occupied with new Christmas and birthday gifts, I wrote about it.  Me, a computer, a sofa.

I opted to use an image in the post that is the facebook avatar of one of the groups promoting the idea of the bald Barbie — there were several groups when I wrote the post.  Within an hour or so, the administrator of the page somehow became alerted to my blog and wrote several comments.  Her tone was respectful, though her arguments, in my humble estimation, were weak.  At the time of my post, the page had approximately 5K facebook likes.  There was some excitement on Day 1, as the administrator of the page linked to it on her bald Barbie page, calling it “negative” and “against our cause.”

Early on Day 2, I heard from a childhood friend, a local news anchor, that my Barbie v. Cancer post had been picked up by Jeff Crilley’s Rundown. What’s Jeff Crilley’s Rundown, you ask?  Yeah, I had to Google it, too.   Apparently, Jeff Crilley is a pretty powerful guy.  Another friend referred to him as the “Faith Popcorn of trending and emerging topics.”

Crilley runs a PR shop, all journalists, all the time.  He publishes a daily “Rundown,” a subscription service that offers story suggestions for journalists around the country of trending topics.  Mr. Crilley, somehow, probably because of the healthy traffic that was generated, listed my Barbie v. Cancer post as a story to watch and cover.

By Tuesday night, several small media outlets around the country started running stories about the call for a bald Barbie to raise acceptance for girls with cancer and other illnesses that result in hair loss.  One gal (I can’t bring myself to call her a journalist) in Salt Lake City identified me as the “leader of the anti-bald Barbie movement.”  Really? Huh.  A movement?  And here I thought it was just me in my jammies on the living room sofa expressing an opinion.

Tuesday night is when things started getting heated.  More stories started appearing.  All referenced the bald Barbie facebook page that I had featured.  Their numbers started exploding.  The bald Barbie pages I did not feature saw no change.  Flatline.  Threads on the featured page became so heated that folks championing “the cause,” as it is so ridiculously referred to, started advocating that folks who disagreed with the manufacture and marketing of a bald Barbie should be shot.  Wow.  Yeah, that is when I promised Mary Tyler Dad I would make my exit from visiting that page anymore.

By Wednesday, Day 3, bald Barbie was national news.  God bless the Huffington Post who ran a story where I was referenced as Mary Tyler Mom with a link, rather than “one blogger.”  As Tuesday’s stories made minimal reference to there being an opposing view to the bald Barbie, I started to see the irony of the situation.  Here I was — one mom, one lap top, one pair of pajamas, one sofa — influencing national news.  And with kind of, sort of the opposite effect I was hoping for (though I love all the discussion of pediatric cancer, even if it is sanitized and romanticized).  Oops.

Turns out, America loves herself a Barbie.  Even a bald one.  The bald Barbie facebook page I featured now has over 110K likes.  In four days. Posted by one of their administrators a couple of hours ago:

Okay I am trying not to slam people’s facebook pages with clutter. However, we have been getting complaints about people’s posts. I will say this we love our supporters and hope our growth can keep up. However we grew to over 111,000 in 4 days! We all have families, and some full time jobs. We are not able to catch everything immediately. If someone is completely rude and ridiculous hit the reportbutton to Facebook. Please just contact us if we do not see it. In the last 4 days we have had many media requests internationally and nationally. So it has been very overwhelming to us all how fast this has grown. This has been a more than full time job for all the administrators involved, so please be patient with our growing pains. Thank you for your patience.

As I feared, the original intent of the bald Barbie — raising awareness for childhood cancer and other illnesses that result in girls losing their hair — has been swallowed by the pink breast cancer movement.  Many of the folks responding to this idea, and they are now all over the world, are women who have been affected by breast cancer.  Many more are calling for proceeds to be donated to the Susan G. Komen (I would add “for the cure”, but I’m pretty certain they would slap a lawsuit on my ass if I did that, so I won’t) foundation. I had a hunch that would happen when I first posted on Monday and it brings me no pleasure.

So, you’re welcome, bald Barbie “cause.”  I did you a solid.  And I learned a lesson.  One mom with a laptop and an opinion is a mighty powerful force. Word.