So when I read that Lance Armstrong was stripped of his titles last week, it didn't make me angry or make me want to stand on a soapbox and talk about "cheating."
I was thinking about my wife, who- while going through cancer herself- read both of Lance's books and declared that he was her personal hero. And that if Lance Armstrong could beat brain cancer, then she surely could beat breast cancer.
Really, Lance Armstrong was her inspiration.
Now, I know what my wife would say if she were here: She would be in denial. She might even know she was in denial, but she would have still proclaimed his innocence and you know why?
Because he still beat cancer. He started LiveStrong. Just like folks who love their politicians, and don't believe that their gay-hating Senator would ever actually be gay, Karen would be in full-blown denial about Lance.
She would say, "Michael, he still beat cancer and won seven Tours; leave me alone and go eat your cereal."
And that's okay too. There are plenty of reasons to believe that Lance Armstrong is innocent. He has his side of the story, and there are a lot of people who take great pleasure in seeing great men fall. Innocent or guilty, there is something very sick about our society. We love to see people take tremendous falls and I have no idea why that's so fun for people.
I wish Lance Armstrong didn't take this fall. If he's innocent, I especially feel bad, but if he's guilty, this causes a lot of damage to a lot of people in our society.
1. Cancer patients, like my wife, who were truly inspired by Lance Armstrong may lose him as a source of hope. That's horrible. If Lance is responsible for ripping the hope away from all of those he's inspired (all while writing books about his innocence), he did something truly evil. Did he really do this? It's so hard to grasp.
2. If he's innocent; then petty, spiteful people who harbor great jealousy for the guy are responsible for ripping the hope away from cancer patients all over the world.
But the worst thing, the thing that really, really makes me angry about this Lance Armstrong thing-- nobody has mentioned. I haven't read about this and maybe I'm silly for thinking it.
3. If Lance Armstrong beat unbeatable odds, using a mixture of hormones and exercise to knock fully metastasized testicular cancer out of his body, why did he not share that with my wife and millions of other cancer patients? I'm not a doctor or a scientist, but I do know this. If I had advanced stage cancer, and through a series of blood transfusions and performance enhancing drugs, a "miracle" occured- I would step forward and tell the world that there might be a correlation and I would release all of my secret medical records.
We know he didn't use medical marijuana, because he didn't start eating a lot of Doritos or anything.
Mr. Armstrong, if you followed a certain regimen-- no matter how embarassing that regimen was-- and you somehow beat advanced cancer that travelled to your brain: Please do the right thing and tell the world. There may not be any correlation at all, but if there is, and you aren't telling anyone, you are committing a terrible sin.
I could give a crap about the Tours. I want to know what you did to make all of that cancer go away. I don't care if you drank cat urine- you need to tell us.
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