Starting to avoid people because of the silly things they say!!

Or.......very first thing said before actually knowing how you are or what your treatment is......you could go and see a Counsellor ! I was acting perfectly rationally at the time. And "you are walking well ! "  (same person) I think I may have leapt up a tiny step in their garden i.e. being treated like an idiotic invalid.

So! I went to a local ice cream parlour for a treat with my daughter, we’ve been going regularly to taste all the flavours, bit of time out etc! Minding our own when the owner came over, I don’t know her, she doesn’t know me. ‘Sorry to interrupt’ she says, ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying I have every sympathy, breast cancer?’ Bit stunned and not wanting to be rude I say, ‘er yes, we’re just having a get away from it all outing’ She then proceeds to say, ‘yes I had it two years ago, how’re you finding chemo?’ I’m now trying to close down the convo, I’m having time out, I’m there alone with my 12 year old, I don’t want to have this discussion with someone I don’t know and as a previous sufferer frankly should know bloody better. Then!! She says, ‘I just wanted to come over and offer you my hair pieces, I hate seeing them unused, would you like them??’ Er no I’d like you to bugger off and leave me alone you insensitive, interrupting plank, would’ve been far ruder if it wouldn’t have meant not being able to go back!!!

Incredible !!!!! Did she kind of bear down on you both, brandishing the hair pieces like a whirling dervish ???? This has to be the best yet and I love it !!!! REALLY cheered me up because I was feeling a bit fed up and hot flushy due to Letrozole. So surreal and so funny ! But not for you at the time !!! Really strange and odd behaviour.

Just wow! Well done on keeping your composure. Such crass insensitivity on her part. I would have been tempted to see her wearing her own ice cream!

Luckily she didn’t have said hair pieces on her  glad it gave you a well deserved giggle! Very odd behaviour as you say, I’m bald with a beanie on so she has zero idea what my hair was like even!!! People can be weird even when oddly well intentioned  lucky for her Eline the ice cream is great of I think my daughter would have done her!! When she walked off my daughter said ‘wow, just WOW!!!’ X

You made me smile and of course being a woman of a certain age, it brought to mind Iggy Pop wearing a hairpiece as a horse's tail in 1977.

Pasted a link, sorry about the quality  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4hPnZUMBwA 

This is how to think of her hair pieces 

As one of the comments says:

1977 - The parents didn't understand

2001 - The kids don't understand

Strikes me that he sure did like his chemo..........still alive and still got his mojo in his 70s now.

Keep smiling when all about you are losing it.

WallyDug

From a very selfish perspective, I am glad I read this just now. It reminded me to reinforce an old routine of answering questions with questions (nicely at first of course) so as to avoid having to answer and to signal to the other person that the question is quite possibly unwanted.

The woman sounds more than a bit stupid not only for her approach but for her offering a very personal body-item as she did. 

As an aside, the next person who says to me, "I have every sympathy," may find themselves at the receiving end of a very negative response. I have a real allergy to the, "oh poor you," approach. 

Now that made me smile!!

And so did that!

Bit of a left field one this, but got me unsettled today. Wonder if I'm being oversensitive?

Context: I'm ~3 months post chemo and my hair is growing back nicely, but it's still very short.

Went to my friend's birthday party. Got chatting with someone I don't know, who asked what my pronouns were. No problem there - I told him.

Mentioned that it's not often that people ask so we talked about that. He said "well, you can't make assumptions about people."

Then he gestured at two mutual friends of ours - women with long hair - and said "I mean I wouldn't ask [so-and-so] or [so-and-so] what their pronouns were but... you know."

I was like... what?

You can't make assumptions about people but... ironically you just did. On the one hand I appreciate him being considerate enough to ask about my pronouns if he wasn't sure. But I felt singled out when he said there were people he wouldn't bother asking - it was just too obvious.

I didn't want to tell him I had cancer so I just said "it's worth remembering there are lots of different reasons that people look the way they do" and left it there.