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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2655 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Fuckin cancer, man. You stay well.

Thanks. I got my first tumor cut out a couple years ago, but it was only a basal cell carcinoma, which is like the yapping baby chihuahua of cancers. Fortunately, too; if I'd ignored anything actually dangerous for so long ("boy it's weird that this scar is still sensitive to any little scrape", I thought to myself intermittently for a year, as I literally put band-aids on my damned cancer) I'd be dead.

I'm not old yet but I've already had a life to be immensely grateful for. What's killing me (albeit only metaphorically so far) is that, as the name would suggest, bad genes are genetic. Not only did I get my dad's allele, so did at least one of my kids. Of all cancer's victims in my extended family so far, though, only one died really early, IIRC in her 40s; everybody else either died around 70, or got cancer in their 60s but managed to beat it for now. Even my dad almost managed to beat his; it looked cured and it didn't recur for a year. Hopefully we'll have made even more oncology progress by the time my kids need it.

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