Is AS worse than cancer?

Post Reply New Topic

There is a book called "I wish my kids had cancer: A family surviving the autism epidemic". It is written by a parent of two autistic children.

Cancer is terminal and has more debilitating symptoms. Children can have cancer and struggle with it all their lives. Or have a short life. Or may overcome it like my friend had.

AS/autism might be difficult for us, but we at least have a healthy body. Our cells aren't dying, we can walk and we're not in a lot of physical pain.

You just can't compare the two.

I watched my father regress from an intelligent self employed man to a man who forgot what simple everyday objects were, couldn't go to the toilet on his own and was in so much pain and had so much depression he wanted to die.
And I lost him.

My autism gets frustrating but the most severe symptom of all is the emotion of loss. Fear of change, poor social skills, not wanting to see people, severe sensory issues, heck even ADHD, epilepsy, PMDD depression - nothing compared to how much I miss my father.

That's the most horrible thing I've read yet, NOTHING is worse than having cancer!! ! I would rather be dead than undergo hellish chemo treatments. Violent nausea, constant vomiting, your eyelashes falling out, your body stuck full of tubes and hoses, weeks in the hospital and if the cancer doesn't kill you the chemo does. I may have to stop coming onto this site if I keep seeing see such terrible things being posted!

People DIE SLOW and MISERABLE deaths from cancer. There's no cure, and even if it goes into remission there's always a chance it will come back worse than ever.

I just wanted to add, that the difference between my dad, and my uncle (my dads' brother-in-law) is pretty large, and my uncle is now dying of cancer.

My Ohio friend/cousin-in-law is keeping me updated on my uncles' condition. I think he'd rather have autism.

What an awful thing to say! And so wrong!

Guys... Cancer sucks, but let's not go so far as to say that people who get cancer are absolutely screwed and their lives must be horrible with nothing good about them ever.

In fact, most people who get cancer will recover. Depending on the type, treatment might not even involve having to take any sick days. Even people who have aggressive, hard-to-treat, and even inevitably fatal cases have still found satisfaction and even joy in life.

People are scared of cancer, sure. And it'd be great if nobody ever got it. But in my family, practically every woman will get breast cancer--inevitably, by the time they're sixty--and we usually survive it, especially with modern treatment. It sucks, and sometimes it kills you, but it's part of life. It's not some alien phenomenon that you should run screaming from. It's just a bad thing that happens to people.

Cancer is bad, but it's not infinitely bad. People survive it. Even people who die from cancer can die with no regrets and a fulfilled life. We're all going to die, after all; if it's cancer that gets you, you'll be in good company. That's what'll get a lot of us, especially now that we've defeated so many infectious diseases and people are routinely living into old age when those glitches in cell division start to build up.

Autism worse than cancer? No. But let's not be overly fearful of cancer, either. I think if I had cancer, I'd want people to think of me as the same person as always--not some poor pitiful thing who came down with the worst disease in the universe. I'd want to be able to b***h about side effects or symptoms without people getting those long faces like they're in mourning. Cancer's a part of human existence. If you think about it, dying itself is a part of human existence. I'd really prefer for us to just matter-of-factly support each other when we needed it, without all the pity and fear attached to it.

I hate the misery pissing contest that some people seem to want to engage in. Every person's struggle is horrible to them. There is no real way to compare how that pain affects them to how someone else's pain affects them. You can't map the internal experience. Plus, both problems are a spectrum of sorts. Given the choice between Asperger's and inoperable brain cancer, most of the world would take being an aspie. Given the choice between a small spot of skin cancer that can be removed and dealt with and go into remission and low functioning classic autism, most people would take the cancer. It's a silly and insensitive statement then as it unduly demonizes those with one condition by comparing them to those with another.

There is a member on an australian forum whose daughter has leukaemia and Aspergers...she is 5 years old.

I have Autism, Muscular Dystrophy, Seizures and non verbal.
And I "NOT" give that stuff up to have Cancer.