Today on the way to work, I saw a bumpersticker  that read, “If only people with closed minds also had closed mouths.”  I had an experience this weekend that fit perfectly with that sentiment.

We had a dear friend and her husband in town this weekend to celebrate their impending parenthood, and so we decided to go to a spa to get massages while the boys were at the Husky game. I was super relaxed, enjoying my massage, when my therapist asked (I had shown her my port so that she wouldn’t massage too much in that area) what kind of cancer I had (have). I told her lung, and she said, somewhat flatly, “Oh.” I waited a couple of minutes, and said, “And I didn’t smoke.”  Immediately, she said,”Oh that’s just terrible, I can’t believe it, that must be just awful for you. I haven’t ever heard of anyone getting lung cancer if they didn’t smoke — you must have been exposed to a lot of second hand smoke. Did you work in a bar?”

Erg. So then, I felt like I needed to educate her a little bit about the realities of lung cancer, and the fact that no one deserves any sort of cancer, which I did, and that pretty much took up the rest of my massage.  Although I appreciated the fact that I got a chance to open someone’s mind….I would have liked to not have done it during what was supposed to be a chance for me to relax, and maybe not think about cancer for an hour…