Two quoted sections from the Skeptic Magazine Hotline. Dr. Harris deals regularly with cancer patients.
Breast cancer is a long, drawn-out thing.
You can spend 5 or 10 or 15 years in a constant agony of anxiety about having a fatal disease, or you can find a lie and be happy for the same time. That's the conundrum facing all skeptics. Skepticism aims to find out the truth in all things. The lie which skeptics tell themselves is that the truth always, in the end, makes things better. That lie is to relieve the anxiety THEY have that sometimes, occasionally, what they're doing AS skeptics, is not the kindest thing they can be doing.