Telling people??

At first, I let others know I was diagnosed with bc, but the metastatic part was only revealed to my family. The whole ordeal at the beginning was extremely difficult for me emotionally and I had the kind of personality where if I'd told a bunch of people, I'd be trying to make them feel okay about my diagnosis. My energy needed to be on myself, and I needed privacy to work through things.

Then after about five years or so, I gradually started telling a few more people other than my family. I knew one issue it would raise, and that was gossip in a small town. But by that point I could handle it. Sure enough, I attended a church luncheon after a funeral for someone in town, and one of the food servers who's well-connected made an unusual inquiry about my health. While I assured him I was doing okay, what I really wanted to say was, “Hey, look, Pat, if you're wondering whether you should save the leftovers from today for a luncheon after my funeral, don't bother; I'm not planning on dying just yet." I told this to my husband later and we both had a good laugh.

DivineMrsM - same with me. First go around, I was an open book but found myself in the position of needing to assure people which I didn't expect. I didn't want to take that on this time and definitely needed to protect my energy and get my balance around this new reality.

Exbronxgirl - you are right, there are some jobs that will be impacted by the knowledge that a person has stage IV cancer, even if they are tolerating the treatment well and "look" fine. I am in that position right now. I know people have not called real estate agents they "heard" were sick because they didn't want to "bother" them, even though these agents were working and honestly doing fine. My oncologist gave me good advice for me personally which was wait to see how you feel.That being said, I am really shook and devastated as many of us are about the loss of our dear Rabbit. It has me thinking of working less and spending more time with family as well as downsizing our belongings. As a stage IV person I have a huge understanding of why someone like Chadwick Boseman kept his cancer dx private, at least to the general public - I am not sure that he would have been cast in the role of the Black Panther if the studio knew he was sick. He was able to take on that role and others and fulfill his dream as an actor.

I haven't told many people. I don't think people understand metastatic cancer well enough and jump to lots of conclusions. it's hard because if you don't tell anyone you get less support, on the other hand also fewer war stories and inappropriate comments and ghosting. I don't use the "cancer card" to get anything faster or sympathy or anything-

Susan Sontag didn't tell anyone either- thought she would get too much bias about her work.

I sometimes worry that someone will be mad when they find out and I didn't tell them- but, I don't worry about that anymore. I just enjoy having interactions with a whole lot of people who don't know and therefore the conversation never goes to my health or cancer ( unless it is someone else's cancer)

Most people don't get marginalized because they are going to die someday- but, we often do-

the question of should you stop working etc is very tough- my first MO said he thought people all worked too long and then got cancer before they got to do something other than work. I was 58, several years before retirement, DH was 63 and had just retired- I found it super hard to retire and think being younger would be even harder. perhaps if I had known I would live 10 years after diagnosis I would have gone back to work- but, after a year of treatment I was tired, sad and bald- work was very demanding and ....I had no crystal ball.