Twice this last week I actually put in a good word for cancer.  Or I elevated it to its rightful place.  Or I tried to be truthful about it without the usual all out fear that we give to it.  I can’t articulate my attempts exactly but they come from a need for clarity.  Yes, clarity is a good start I think.

A friend had said that cancer causes your hair to fall out.  I countered, no chemo makes your hair fall out.  I suppose he was right if you lump the whole problem together, cause and side effects.  But really our hair falling out comes from our clumsy attempt to fight cancer.  I often say twenty years from now we will look back on chemotherapy as a primitive and barbaric practice but it is all we have right now.  Well it is one of the important tools.

Just a side note that it is always funny how the hair falling out is the side effect that people in general focus on.  There are so many things that a patient contends with and hair is not one of the hard ones.  I know women have a harder time with it but men, heck it is style now for us.

And the other instance of me “sticking up for cancer” is someone asked if my cancer was in remittance.  I have never heard that word come out of a doctor’s or nurse’s mouth concerning me.  Not that it isn’t a possibility but the chance seems remote at best.  But I laughed at the person’s question and said no it is my copilot.  It was said jokingly but really it is in some ways accurate.

This all may seem strange and unusual to someone not armpit deep in this problem but after years of thinking on it and reflecting and dealing with it I am lead to many unusual places.  None of it is normal, in the sense that normal generally equates with cancer free.    But strangely enough, now I see, it also equates to “fighting cancer”.  Those may be the old fight or flight categories.  Somehow I am dwelling in a third space .

I hope that this makes slight sense.  I have to go.  Of course we will continue this at some point.  Thanks, love, Felipe.