A while ago, I posted about alternative medicine. That posted was flooded with comments to the point that I had to restrict the ability of anonymous people to comment because I couldn't stand the ignorant comments I was getting. From time to time, I still get new comments on it. In that post, I talked about two alt med issues that had come into my life at that time: a question my dad had asked me (which had prompted me to research a particular author), and the fact that my aunt had gotten cancer, and rather than using our best medical knowledge, turned to juice to try to stave off, essentially, death. Untreated, that's certainly what cancer does.

The first part prompted most of the comments on that post. Seems the guy I was complaining about has a lot of friends. However, I did get a few comments about how dare I complain about my aunt turning a treatable cancer into a terminal one. That's what I want to update about.

My aunt is dying.

She may not be willing to admit that yet, but that is the inevitable outcome of her present circumstances, and now, it's highly probably that even consulting science-based medicine would no longer help her.

The cancer has spread to her brain. To the point that she has been in four car accidents this year already. One can only wonder what it's doing to her brain if that's already happening. She won't go see a doctor, and she won't stop driving. She continues to drink juice. I'm no doctor, so I couldn't really estimate reliably how long she has, but under the circumstances, I would be surprised if she sees Christmas.

So, to all of you self-righteous pricks that came onto my blog and got pissy because I expressed a reasonable concern for my aunt's well-being, I have just one thing to say to you:

Fuck off.

To all those people who suggested to me that modern medicine can't be trusted and that juice was just as good a solution as chemotherapy, I say to you:

Fuck off.

To all those people who suggested I was in the wrong for not supporting my aunt even in my own thoughts, and acquiencing to what nonsense was told to me, I say to you:

Fuck off.

My aunt is going to leave her husband a widower, and as much as I think he's a prick, I wouldn't wish this one anyone. My aunt is going to leave her 20-something daughter motherless. And whether it's because she is acting like an infant, and isn't willing to acknowledge that some diseases are hard and you have to really work to kill them if you wish to live, or whether it's simply because she was deceived by a charlatan peddling anecdotes as though they were real evidence, it doesn't matter because she will be just as dead, and I have just as much right to be fucking pissed.

So, if your plan is to commment on this post and say anything that I might find offensive, ignorant or anti-science, don't pretend to be surprised if I then bite your head off in response. My aunt is gonna die, and she didn't need to, and anyone who pretends that juice was a responsible alternative to chemotherapy is going to be roundly excoriated. You explain to her daughter why her mother won't be at her wedding, when this could all have been prevented.

And, just in case my aunt wanders in here... blaming this on cell phones doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to live in reality on everything else.