I noticed this because Patrick, the Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young cancer survivors, were sitting right in Christ’s very sacred heart and whatever. We all sat in a circle right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying. This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. ) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

The fault in our stars book online