The voice of experience ...

... Cancer etiquette.

... hope is a dicey thing. And as far as I can tell, no one else can raise your hopes for you. There is no standardized method for achieving it, no universally valid argument for its reality. Despair may be a sin, as my Catholic friends told me in the first weeks after my diagnosis, but their telling me so did nothing whatever to lift me out of it. I had to find my own way out. Every man’s capacity for hope is as unique as his taste buds.

See also: Tom Lubbock: a memoir of living with a brain tumour. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

(Post bumped.)