“I don’t think anyone ever gets over anything in life; they merely get used to it.” – Douglas Coupland
In my view, cancer is a two-headed monster. There is the actual disease, the medical condition, to be dealt with as best possible, hopefully to ultimately achieve a NED status. Then there is the other head. I don’t know what to call this head, other than the culture of cancer, which angers and repulses me for the most part. For me this includes everything from the warrior metaphors, the fuzzy-wuzzy, airy-fairy “hope-believe” and tyranny of positive thinking that I do not buy into, and the supposed path a cancer patient is to complete: one of getting treated, taking advantage of the personal growth and enrichment opportunity by learning lessons and accepting cancer as a gift (how do those poor saps who do not get the gift of cancer ever grow to be better people—YES I’M BEING SARCASTIC), and then putting cancer behind once treatment is all done. There is probably more I’m just not thinking of right now.
**Side note: I’ve written about much of the above before, and my feelings and opinions have changed little. See list of related posts at the end.
It is that last notion, the one in which “now that I am done with treatment I am supposed to be over cancer” that is chasing its own tail in my head.
From the day I learned I had cancer, the idea that I’d ever be over cancer just did not make sense. How can one get past cancer? The biggest obstacle to that lofty goal is the constant fear, however sharp and present or dull and distant it is, that cancer will come back—it is always there. Not to mention that I will always have to ‘fess up to having had it, when getting new medical care providers or insurance, or who knows what else; I always have to check that box in medical history. Cancer is my history, and history has everything to do with the present. Continue reading “Not Behind Me, Woven Into Me”
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