Some Facts and Perspectives for Fans Who View Reigns Leukemia as a Work

It used to be conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the lunar landing. Once you entered something involving space and extraterrestrials, people who truly believed were marginalized or ostracized. Not in 2019, when neighbors or members of your family probably think the Earth is flat, vaccinations cause autism or lizards. The people who work with the lizard work with MS-13 to overthrow democracy.

Since its inception, professional wrestling has hardly been seduced by conspiracy theorists. And guessing where the veil of secrecy lies between what is real and what is written in the script has become an even more important element of the hobby's attraction to the internet age. The Montreal Screwjob, the incident that killed the kayfabe and triggered the so-called era of "reality", is still the subject of "work or shoot?" Debates over two decades later.

It is not surprising then that there are people who react to the announcement made by Roman Reigns on the February 25 Raw that his leukemia is in remission with questions. But it's disappointing enough, some would even blame Reigns and the WWE for simulating cancer to convince the big dog to have rejected the public who had rejected him as the first star of the company. Even if you think the McMahon are capable of such a devious trick (and for the record, although there is a list of things that they have been confirmed or who would have been involved and that I find unpleasant to despicable, I do not I do not think they go down so low), there is no indication that Roman would accept this kind of cons.

But in case you can not shake your doubts or just ask yourself questions about the illness with which lives one of the biggest names in the modern struggle, a UK charity – where, yes, dear compatriots, they spell it in a strange way – here are some answers.

Leukemia Care (This was originally published in a Twitter feed, you can find right here. For ease of reading, we cut / paste much of the text in this article):

"First of all, incredible news about Roman Reigns. Relapse is a frightening reality for all patients with leukemia. You are either afraid that your cancer will reappear, or you have to undergo treatment in case of relapse. It's great to hear positive news from a patient with leukemia. The tweets we see focus primarily on the idea of ​​what a cancer patient should look like.

"How can he have hair?"
"How can he not lose weight?"
"Why does not he look like a cancer patient?"

Back to the sources. Leukemia is a cancer. It affects people of all ages. There are four main types of cancer: ALL, AML, CLL and CML. However, there are other types and subtypes. LEUKEMIA IS COMPLICATED! The different types are the key. Acute leukemias are aggressive and require aggressive treatment to save a patient. Chronic leukemias are incurable but treatable. DO NOT FORGET – We do not know what type of leukemia he is suffering from. Therefore, NONE of us can question his treatment, his appearance, and so on.

The first question – how can he have hair?

The treatment of leukemia can lead to hair loss. This can cause thinning of the hair. This can cause no hair loss. Leukemia can make you lose weight. Leukemia can also make you gain weight. There is not one way that leukemia SHOULD look.

A great example of this is the huge WWE fan and patient rights advocate @KrisTheScript who has lived with chronic leukemia over the last decade. Does it look like a patient with leukemia?

Kris Griffin's Twitter

Our website is teeming with stories of leukemia patients – if you have ten minutes, it might be worth reading …

Some last thoughts on the psychological impact of leukemia. Living with or beyond a diagnosis of leukemia is scary. The fear of relapse is always present. Think before tweeting. We are more than happy to answer your questions about Leukemia / Leukemia or to point you in the right direction for further information. Do not be shy, there is no silly question. Do not forget that everything in life is not a job. "

As a person who immediately wondered if a delay of four months between the announcement of the beginning of treatment for a relapse of leukemia, the announcement of the remission and the return to the fight was not ridiculously fast, this wire was helpful to me. It was the same for a blog post by Kris Griffin. You can find the entirety of his essay "Roman Reigns & Me vs. Leukemia" here, but here are the paragraphs that I found most enlightening:

"Some wrestling fans think it's a job. Just to get a little into the business, a work is an act that manipulates an audience in order to get the desired answer. This is not a job. And my first feeling for the people who said that was to pick them up, slap them on the canvas and cover them for the 1-2-3.

But I will not do it. You see, there is a fundamental flaw in all this, Roman's forgiveness seems to be too good to be true. Five months after diagnosis, he looks awesome with all his hair and does not fit the traditional narrative of a patient with a blood cancer. Cancer does not work like that, is not it?

In fact, yes, some blood cancers do. I have a type of blood cancer similar to that of Roman, called Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) for 11 years now. Every morning, I take a small white tablet called the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), which puts my leukemia back in its box at the molecular level. I had bad days during which I felt tired or a little sick, but I continued. I work full time in education and did not take a day off for leukemia-related illness. It took me about 9 months to reach a level of hematologic remission, my blood seemed OK to me. It took 6 years to reach a molecular level of remission and now my leukemia is pretty much undetectable. I have never lost my hair and have never had traditional chemotherapy.

Do you see where I'm going with that? Roman is an elite athlete and this might surprise you that this is not the case. We both fought our leukemia in our own way and according to our own schedule. But there is one thing that, I guarantee, will agitate any patient with leukemia in remission: it is someone who says, "Well, you do not look sick!" Can not we celebrate Romain's beautiful appearance, or would we rather leave him stung in a drainer, pushed into a wheelchair? This is our traditional point of view and if our traditional point of view has been changed, it's not a lie. "

Nobody can make you believe anything. As mentioned above, this is especially true in professional wrestling, where creators and performers try to convince the audience that pretending is real, and that fans reward outstanding performances with fiction.

But if you have doubts about something like Joe's "Roman Reigns," Anoa'i, let's find out. As much as organizations like Leukemia Care and people like Kris Griffin are willing to help you.