Not to mention the extra burden it puts on you when you are dying. Nobody wants to hear, "yeah, I have cancer, and I could have this debilitating operation with a 50% rate, but I've weighed all my options and since the operation would leave me with a lower quality of life than I'm willing to accept, and genetics mean I'll 80% likely get another cancer within ten years anyway plus all my other non-cancer health problems, 50% isn't worth it. I'm just going to let it do its thing. I'm not even that sad about it, since my life has been pretty crap anyway." They want you to fight! and be a cancer warrior! and validate their fear of death as the worst possible thing that could ever happen to anybody.

I just don't talk about it anymore, because I always end up having to provide justification and emotional support even to people I barely know, because they're so upset about me not being like "another forty years with no sex organs, bladder, colon, or support system that doesn't think I'm supposed to be supporting them, and additional heart and lung problems if other cancers don't get me first? Yeah buddy, sign me the fuck up!"