Cancer Schmancer

So today I was checking out Schmitten Kitten and I came across this post:

Surprisingly Not a Bonerkiller: He Might Be Dying Soon (But He Probably Isn't)



Anyhoo, I started to write this as a comment but realized it was more like a story so I figured I might as well just post it here instead.



So a few years ago I ran into a guy I had known to at least a minor extent since I was maybe 2. He was my age, and when he was maybe 4 or something he was diagnosed with Leukemia. My parents were close friends with his parents for awhile and I remember playing over there and the big celebration party when he got better. Through middle school and high school, possibly in part due to all the attention (however relevant that attention was) relished on him when he was a kid, he became a real obnoxious asshole. Suffice to say, I never liked him much. But when I ran into him years after graduating from high school he seemed like a changed guy. We started hanging out and even briefly dated though that didn't last long because he was just TOO intensely cutesy and touchy feely ALL the time, and he did things like writing love poems which I had to pretend were sweet but really just made me want to gag. So while we were dating he told me ALL these stories. He had hiked the Appalacian Trail. He had lived down in Texas (across the lake from one of Sandra Bullocks's houses, he claimed). He had developed brain cancer in high school which was why he left school for awhile, and he had had at least one relapse since then. He had been engaged down in Texas but his fiance died. While in most instances I would have been skeptical that all these stories were true (and I was a little bit), but he did show me pictures, and he seemed so sincere and because I thought he had been through a lot I gave him the benefit of the doubt.



After we broke up, we remained friends and eventually he started dating a girl, moved in with her and fairly rapidly got engaged. I thought it was all a little fast, but at least she seemed nice enough and he seemed happy. Awhile after they were engaged he called me and told me they had broken it off but were still living together until they could find other places. As they had gotten engaged so fast, I believed him. A little while after that he called me sounding really upset. He came over to my apartment down the street from his, and he told me that he had found out his cancer had relapsed and because of all the chemo and treatments he had been trhough in the past the doctor said his body couldn't take anymore and he only had a few more months to live. He said he wasn't going to tell his ex-fiance because she was his ex and he didn't want his parents to know yet. I tried unsuccessfully to convince him to tell them, but he refused and he said I was the only one he had told because I was the only one he trusted. He cried and I cried and we hugged and then he left asnd said he wanted to be alone. The next day I invited him over to just hang out and watch movies to try to destract him and to keep him company. It was then he started getting and handsy and asked if I would "make love to him." Not only did I have a boyfriend at the time, I was too upset and numb to even think about sex - for the two or three weeks I actually believed or kind of believed him, I was too upset to even have sex with my OWN boyfriend, much less him. I told him no, and he got all quiet and said he was going to go for a long walk. The next morning I got a call from my mom who had gotten a call from his mom who had gotten a call from his fiance. Yes, apparently, if they had broken up, at least his parents didn't know about it and maybe neither did she. Apparently he hadn't come home and knowing that at the time I was his best friend, thought I might know where he was. Although he eventually showed back up, at this point I was even more upset and confused and gave in and told my mom with the promise that she wouldn't say anything to his parents. I also called a support center for cancer patients, especially terminal ones, and their friends and loved ones. I was going to try to get myself into a support group, and was going to try to convince him too as well even if he wouldn't tell his parents. I would be the best friend I could be.



So I call and I talk to a counseler for a phone consultation and I tell him the story - everything - he get's quiet, then he says to me, in essence, that it sounded like my friend might be lying. he said, of course, that he couldn't be sure, but that this kind of behavior was actually not uncommon amongst cancer patients and/or cancer survivors. That they would get so used to having ALL this attention that even when they were doing better or were completely fine, they might use cancer, and sometimes dying of cancer, to get more of that attention, to get sex, to get money, drugs, what have you. He encouraged me to try to find out more about the situation and to just be aware that although he could be telling the truth or part of the truth, it also may have basically been an elaborate lie to get back into my pants.



At this point I asked my mother to talk to his parents about what was going on. They told my mother that they knew his doctors and they really didn't think anything was wrong but they would pay attention and would let me know if they found out anything about him REALLY being sick. At this point I didn't know what to think. I certainly didn't want the guy who I had thought was one of my best friends to be dying of cancer, but I also didn't want to think that he had lied to me about something SO big and SO serious, KNOWING how I would react, just to maybe have sex with me again? Did I know him at all? Was anything he told me the truth?



I became even more suspicious as time went on and he would call and I would ask him how he was and he's be like "I'm fine! I feel great, why do you ask?" Why do I ask? Umm, because you told me you are DYING OF CANCER. Then I just started avoiding his phone calls and avoiding him. Thought it was getting increasingly here that all signs pointed to lying, how could I just come out and ask him? Hey, are you lying about dying of cancer? Obviously he didn't die. I told his parents that if he ever ACTUALLY was dying of cancer and THEY contacted me, that was the only way I would ever see or speak to him again. They understood why.