Nancy Jill's Cancer Alphabet: P

P is for personification and other metaphors used to describe cancer. It is difficult to find language to describe the experience of having cancer in your body and to describe the experience of going through cancer treatment. In the case of having cancer in your body, the cells are of you, unlike infectious diseases, yet they feel other, like you have been invaded. To me they felt like anarchist terror cells, unwilling to leave until they created complete destruction. We talk about them hiding from the immune system, invading organs, and generally being militaristic and furtive. Yet, cancer cells are mindless. They are mutated cells that churn out proteins that allow them to persist, proliferate and become undetectable. They do this as automatons with no capacity for intention. Our need for understanding creates a false sense of intent. Yet personification of cancer can be helpful. My friend Pamela, who died just over a week ago, named her tumor and his evil offspring Bob. It felt good to talk about how much we hated Bob. Our need for meaning in suffering causes us to elevate the experience of cancer patients. Most common these days is the idea that we are warriors fighting a battle. I never liked this metaphor, and I never use it to describe myself or my course of treatment. I also detest the word journey. Never, never ask me about my “cancer journey.” This is not a trip, an exercise in self-exploration, world exploration, or delivering the ring to the depths of Mordor. It was a creation and acceptance of a treatment plan, made as carefully and rationally as possible, after considering alternatives. Then it was an ordeal of chemo, followed by illness and fatigue. If I have to use a metaphor, it was a long slog through a putrid, mucky marsh. It was a slough of despair with no celestial end. This is not a battle and it will not be won or lost. I plan to use the first line of treatment for as long as I can and then move on. Unless a cure is found before I die, cancer will kill me. I will not have lost a battle or a contest. I will have lived a life as beautifully and with as much meaning as I can, in service to others and with respect and honor of my needs. Treatments may fail me, but I will be neither winner nor loser. I will have been a human who lived and then died. #metavivor #pinktober #thisisnotpink