Our Cancer

Just seeing the title "My Cancer" on the NPR website struck me. Whose cancer? My cancer? Oh, his cancer. A blog about a man, a journalist, living with cancer.

Since my father's loss I have been ignoring cancer. Stopped reading and collecting information. Pretending it's just not there. I realize this as I click towards Leroy Sievers' blog in fear and revulsion (and later, gratitude - he writes what my father couldn't or wouldn't communicate). I skim the pages, painfully familiar scenes. Transported back in time. Hospitals: wheeling my dad around, his eyes darting around uncomfortably waiting for appointments. Home: my family struggling to care for him; he, struggling to maintain autonomy, dignity. Doctors: clutching clipboards and pens garnered from drug reps on their lunch breaks. They would address us…their pinched faces, squeezing out the portentous words that felt like sealing his fate.

It’s very serious.

We can’t say.

You must understand how it is with someone in his condition.

I hated them, but they knew so much more than me…so.

Oh stop stop stop. No one wants to read this. Honestly. Furthermore, I don’t want to write it.

I feel like I don’t have a right to write about cancer and my experience with it. We lost that battle. We, because cancer affects the whole family. You will read that on websites. I feel like talking about my own experiences, delusions, misunderstandings, missteps, and failures is selfish and takes away from people who know better than I, who were more successful, selfless, whatever. I also don’t want to glorify my experience while omitting the vast horrors that cancer creates and leaves in its wake, whether its victims survive or not.

I feel the same way about discussing cancer as I would if I were asked to tell blatant lies. I don’t know or understand cancer. I don’t know or understand where it comes from.

What I do know, I hate. I hate that it is an anomaly of cells, God’s mutant mutiny. It cannot be seen or felt with the naked eye. You could see a man tall and strong, fall, and wonder why? In my opinion, there is nothing redeeming about the cancer experience. Survivors are heroes, but they will continue to fight their whole lives. They cannot rest.

I don’t know where I fit in this conversation. You, me, cancer. What are we going to do about that?