Boston Health and Fitness Expo

This weekend, I worked the Lung Cancer Alliance booth at the Boston Health and Fitness Expo. It was inspiring, enlightening and exasperating, all at once.

It's a free event so there are a fair number of punters looking for swag. The crowd was... definitely an interesting cross section of America. That being said, there were actually quite a few people who were both interested in and touched by what we had to say and I think the whole endeavor was 100% worth it.

Some observations from the weekend:

It's the Lung Cancer Alliance, not the Smoking Cessation Alliance

Roughly one fifth of the people who walked up to our table said something like "I quit smoking last year" or "My dad still smokes. I wish he didn't."

For them, lung cancer equals smoking. The two are synonymous.

With those people, I tried to explain that that 60% of those diagnosed with lung cancer either never smoked or quit smoking decades ago, and that only 10% of smokers get lung cancer and that 20% of women who get lung cancer never touched a cigarette.

It got repetitive, but I didn't mind. They didn't know the facts about lung cancer, and I was able to enlighten them a little bit.

A Safe Haven

Some people would walk by the booth and inch closer, with an interested, even misty-eyed look on their faces. They had clearly been touched by lung cancer. For some, our booth became a solace, a safe and comfortable place where family members could talk about their loved ones who had passed on from or survived lung cancer.

Anyone who's ever been touched by lung cancer knows that it doesn't always elicit a warm and fuzzy response. You always run the risk of getting "the look" - the "she must have smoked so therefore she brought it upon herself" look.

90% of the time, they'll come right out and ask, "Did he/she smoke?" But when you're talking with another person about the very painful experience of losing your parent, spouse, sibling or friend, you really don't want to engage in a discussion about assigning blame. You just want sympathy, like anyone else who's lost a loved one. If you were talking about losing your dad to heart disease, you wouldn't want to immediately answer questions regarding how many steaks or doughnuts he ate, or how many cigarettes he smoked. It's the same for us. And at the Lung Cancer Alliance booth, we understood that. We've all been asked that question, so we know not to even go there, unless someone wants to. We were a safe haven.

The Very Informed

I was surprised and happy to see how informed so many people who stopped by to sign our Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction Act Petition were.

I'd start my schpeil about how lung cancer needs more money for research and several people grabbed for the pen to sign the petition right away and said things like "Damn right it does" or "You know it!" This was surprising and uplifting to see.

No Survivors

Interestingly, I didn't meet one new lung cancer survivor in the entire two day experience. Not one. The only people who came up to our booth who'd been touched by lung cancer were the friends and family members of lung cancer patients, most of whom had passed.

One Jerk

Finally, although there were a large amount of freaks and downright lunatics, no one really bothered me except for one man. He badgered me and badgered me about the statistics, questioning the smoking thing and ultimately he got personal, questioning whether I'd done an autopsy on my mother, along with other completely insensitive and inane questions. I had to ask him to leave because he upset me so much.

But in spite of that one bad apple, the event was totally worth it. We reached a lot of people who'd never heard the facts about the disease, and a good deal of others who've been affected by lung cancer but rarely feel as though they have an outlet or a place to turn to.

That felt good.