Link from Uma's blog

Cancer Baby

When you talk to people about a disaster, any disaster for that matter, a common declaration by most participants in the conversation is the statement that they "cannot imagine" what the victims are going through. As a cancer patient, I've heard this statement countless times as it relates to my own personal tragedy -- so much so, in fact, I've concluded that the sentiment it conveys is somehow fundamental to the way people witness and experience the suffering of others. The perverse thing about it, of course, is that even though the statement is typically uttered by those attempting to be sensitive to stories of personal anguish and heartbreak, it actually functions to alienate the afflicted by codifying their difference and casting it into the realm of the extraordinary, wherein their suffering becomes "unimaginable."