Among the many posts to this List, we can sometimes hear the shouts and murmurs of our mingled voices – and some of the human sounds of our GISTmates. As we have come to share among ourselves something of our individual circumstances and personal worries, we have grown closer together – and I believe, at least in that way, we somehow mutually enhance ourselves and become strengthened as an informative and caring group.

Although we describe our various symptoms, concerns and complaints quite fully on this List, we appear to harbor relatively few, if any, dedicated complainers – or even persistent whiners, for that matter. Now, I find that especially interesting because our complaints as patients are regarded as an essential aspect of our medical history and diagnostic workup in clinical medicine. A full and proper diagnostic workup seeks to elicit from patients not only an overview of our pertinent complaints, but a so-called Chief Complaint as an element in relating the patient’s medical history to one’s service chief, consultant or colleagues.

So, although complaints are medically important, it seems to me that our GIST cancer List contains not only relatively few angry or resentful complainers, but that we appear, at least on the surface, to be a rather gentle, good humored and compliant group, under our potentially dire circumstances. While that might seem rather good, if not entirely commendable, I find it to be somewhat curious behavior for many patients diminished by our GIST sarcoma, and jeopardized by the ongoing threat of recurrence and metastases.

So why, I ask, are we and our caregivers not expressing more frequently and openly the sounds of anger and resentment, and howling with outrage under stress and discomfort?

I think it is, at least in part, due to our gratitude. We are terrified but grateful that, unlike too many other cancers, our GIST was identified and diagnosed in time as a treatable neoplasm with relatively favorable prospects. Favorable, that is, providing we obtain proper treatment and monitoring by GIST experts, that we comply with that treatment, and that we remain lucky.

Remaining lucky, despite what they say, is beyond our control. That is so very sad and unfair. Equally unfair, however, is trying to find optimal treatment, and afford the very best if we can. (and who of us deserves or should settle for less than optimal treatment for as long as we can, while awaiting a true cure for GIST?). Some of us have not received optimal or even timely and acceptable treatment that might well have prevented a preventable recurrence. How are any of us supposed to feel about that?

At the very least, sad, depressed, angry, resentful, I would think.

And so, a few weeks ago, when one of our GISTmates, Susan, ventured to post to the List her strong feelings of anger and resentment, we asked and received permission to include her contribution to the Psycho-oncology (Psy-Onc) page of our GSI website in order to encourage further expression and discussion of our human emotions as cancer patients and caregivers. We hope you will go to that page – especially if you somehow feel undeserving of feeling and expressing emotions, or that they should be stoically suppressed, and suffered in masochistic silence as some kind of virtue.

What good does it do to complain, you might ask? Read what SUSAN wrote, and see the good it began to do for persons who care about each other.