Or, reality on cancer.
Watched "Guiding Light" today as I held Little Warrior while she slept off some chemo. Soap operas are not so bad if you have tivo and can watch the entire show in 5 minutes. So, the Queen of the Tear, Reva, is diagnosed with breast cancer. And the results of her biopsy come back within a couple of hours. Yessir, this is tv.
Cancer diagnosis on tv: character is shocked. Character decides to do nothing and hide the cancer from everyone. Eventually, a nurse slips up, the family finds out, and the character is forced into treatment.
Cancer diagnosis on reality: person is shocked. Person calls all the family necessary and explains what's going on. Person seeks opinions on the best doctors and treatment available. Person begins treatment.
My experience and that of my friends, anyway. I'm sure it was different 20 years ago, but c'mon ...
Sort of like childbirth on TV. Woman has one contraction, begins screaming, has wacky misadventures on the way to the hospital, screams at husband, baby slides right out. They never show anyone walking, walking, walking the halls of the maternity ward at midnight trying to dilate another stupid centimeter.
ReplyDeleteTV can be pretty good when you're not up to much. I've been ill a lot recently (off to Doc's on Friday to see what's up) and in the past few weeks, I've got into Bargain Hunt (think two teams+two specialists+one middle-aged highly posh bow tie-and-tally-ho guy getting money, buying things and selling them for a profit), Nothing to Declare (Australian programme about border controls) and Storage Hunters (on TruTV in the USA-guys fighting and arguing while bidding on storage units, sometimes making great profits, sometimes making nothing). The last in particular!
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