Cancer 5

21 Apr 2024

This is probably my last posting before I go in for surgery and start my new life as a “patient”.

I was talking with a friend, and we were laughing at how “patient” has the dual meaning of forebearance and under medical care. We didn’t pull out our phones and find out that it is also from the Latin, for “suffering”.

Anyways, suffering is definitely part of life in CancerLand, and surely a reason why we are culturally so frightened of it, even when prognosis is good. Some measure of suffering will be extracted, on the way through, and that’s if you are lucky.

A poster on the groups shared that she felt angry, when talking to civilians about their “troubles”. She said wanted to scream at them, “well at least you don’t have cancer!”

Someone responded, “the healthy man desires many things, the sick man desires only one thing”. Which seemed the most pithy perspective.

I shared that I felt a little guilty posting about my own mental state, dealing with a stage two diagnosis, in a forum frequented by many people in stages three and four. And people were fairly uniform in saying, there is something about hearing the words, “you have cancer”, that marks a sharp dividing line in ones life, no matter what the physical progression is.

Surgery will be my first sharp physical dividing line. Hopefully also my last, but as usual the grey area is in effect.

Talk to you again soon, on the other side, inshalla.