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Fighting Cancer
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pieterh wrote on 18 Aug 2016 10:08
There are no easy conversations when it comes to dying. Especially when it comes to a disease like cancer, which eats us up from the inside, a betrayal by our own cells. "Fight it," people still tell me. "Don't give up! We need you!" This notion that cancer is a fight… it's one I want to break down, and then rebuild, in this article. I've come to believe that death can be a positive social experience. Let me explain…
Let me start with this: one does not choose to fight, or give in to, a disease like cancer. Perhaps to any disease. In my body right now there is a holy war going on, and has been raging for years. My immune system has been doing its damned best to kill these rogue cells. And the rogue cells, unaware that they're destroying their own host, have been fighting back. It's no small fight. I've lost 15 kilograms in the last few months.
The odds are on the cancer, of course, which is why this family of diseases is a major killer. Our bodies have to keep winning, year after year. Any given cancer has to win only once, and it's Game Over. The only way to beat cancer, really, is to die from something else first.
So this is my first point. Everyone fights cancer, all our lives long. From birth, our immune systems are hunting down and killing rogue cells. I grew up in the African sun, pale skin burned dark. Do I have skin cancer? No, thank you very much, immune system! Much of my adult life I drank a bit too much, ate too much red meat, too few vegetables. Do I have bowel cancer? No, thank you again, you over-active beast of an immune system, you! Hugs.
And most of us can say the same thing, most of the time. We are all cancer survivors, until we're not.
Secondly I want to attack that notion that we can and should "fight", as a conscious effort. Then third, I'll try to explain some of the real fights that we the terminally sick do have.
So take this easy statement: "you must fight, Pieter. Don't let the cancer win!" It wraps up so many difficult emotions in a neat package. It fits into the "disease is mostly in the mind" 1970's era fantasy that still imagines meditation and positive thinking as the cure for rampaging gene mutations. And presumably cholera, malaria, and broken legs as well.
Worse is the implication of blame. When we die, did we not fight hard enough? If it takes me six months to die, am I doing a better job of "fighting my cancer" than someone who dies in six weeks? It goes beyond senseless into the cruel. We don't "lose the fight" against our cancers, any more than a cell phone loses its "fight" against battery exhaustion. The mutations will always win unless something beats them to it. It is a matter of when, not if.
That fist-pumping "you can beat it!" motif has more insidious effects. It drops responsibility like a ripening melon into the lap of the ill. It leaves the pep talker buoyed with their display of positivity and helpfulness. As a conversation with the dying, it is cheap and unintentionally nasty.
My neighbor, nice guy, every time we met over the last months, did the cheerleader thing. Finally I put on proper cancer face (shaved my...