Death Gossip

This is the story of rumors and gossip that, like rumors and gossip often do, went very, very awry.

It started with a comment made to my friend in the grocery store last year. "Tell Katie not to drop out of college, she has far too much potential," she said. "She'll throw her life away." My friend didn't really know what to do with that information. Little did she know the hell I was going through at school. This was post-rape (see My Incredible Story) and I was miserable. I hated school and told a guy friend so. (Let's call him "Jason.")

Jason went on to tell his mom about me hating school. His mom then told my friend to convince me to stay in school when they ran into each other at the store.

Have a headache yet? It was a mess of mis-communication blown out of proportion. It was only a taste of what was to come after my cancer news surfaced.

A little back story: Jason loves me, but the feeling is not-so-mutual. He and I were good friends, but anything beyond that and it was just weird, like fitting a square peg into a round hole. He just didn't get that, though.

*Breathe*

Jeez, it makes me angry just starting this story.

Okay, go.

Jason is close to his family and talks to them quite frequently. He went away to the same school as my boyfriend and I (which was weird too... he would try to flirt with me while I was around my boyfriend. Get a clue, dude).

When he found out about my cancer diagnosis, he was on the phone every night with his parents crying. He sobbed that he didn't know how to take the news.

Okay, so maybe he was really bummed for me.

Quickly, he started getting attention from my bad news. There were a few people I hadn't been able to tell about my diagnosis on campus that he took upon himself to inform. He dissolved into tears while giving them the news, making it his drama and all about how it affected him.

He even skipped his final, telling his professor that his girlfriend was dying.

Dying?!

But more than that... Girlfriend?!

Yes, I had initially gotten a bad diagnosis, but I had also told Jason that it wasn't the final diagnosis nor was I his girlfriend or ever would be.

He apparently chose not to hear that. He began Googling all of the information about Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. If you've ever Googled a disease, you know that you tend to see the worst pictures and read about the very worst scenarios. So, it's no wonder that he was so crazy beside himself with grief.

If it had ended there, that would have been fine and excusable. But it didn't. He proceeded to tell his mother about how bad things were for me. She, in turn, started spreading all of this as fact to other acquaintances of mine and my families'. He joined with her, spreading incorrect information about me and what I was going through, all the while making it out to be far more dramatic than it was.

The stories evolved and spun out of control. Eventually, they got back to my parents.

My mom encouraged me not to talk to Jason any more about my health and I told him so.

Still, he didn't get the clue.

His mom went to the school where my aunt works, pulled her out of her classroom (during class, mind you), to tell her that my dad lost his job and that we were going out of state to start intense cancer treatment because things were looking dire for my situation.

My aunt got upset because she thought she was out of the loop. She called up other family members to ask if they had heard. That rumor escalated, people started worrying and feeling hurt that they hadn't been told about what was going on with me. All that time, no one was calling my family or me to verify information. They didn't want to burden us.

I absolutely understand that, but man, do I wish they had called us first before it got so out of control.

At one point, the rumor got so blown up, I was essentially on my deathbed and entering hospice.

So, my parents were dealing with the calls from family and calls and texts from friends and acquaintances who had been told by Jason and his mom that I was in dire straits. Needless to say, it was an added stress to our family that we could have lived without.

I understand that Jason and his mom thought they were being helpful and acting concerned. However, when it turned into their own gossipy story that they could derive drama from, it became less about concern for me and more about the reaction of the story.

My mom called up Jason's mom and asked her to stop spreading information around because it was entirely incorrect. Her response to my mom?

"What do you want me to do? He's calling me crying every night, devastated that Katie's not talking to him and filling him in."

So sad for Jason, right? You know, because my mom doesn't have more things to worry about than Jason's feelings. I dunno, like, maybe her daughter who has cancer?


The moral of this story is this: Please, check you facts. Seriously.

Whew. I hope for this to be an inspirational blog, but sometimes I just have to vent. Guess the ups and downs go with the territory, huh?

~Katie

Photo Credit: Gossip Girls_1 by lusi
Source: sxc.hu