I’ve spent the month of March, so far, recuperating from surgery for colon cancer. You read a lot when you’re getting over surgery—and, if you’re like me, you watch a lot of “Law and Order” reruns (preferably, any episode that includes the late Jerry Orbach)—and one of the subjects I’ve been reading about is, no surprise, cancer.
Sometimes, the reading is a help. People who have been down this road know things about it that I don’t, and some of them are things I need to know. But the accounts of cancer treatment I’ve read have some problems. One in particular bothers me.
Here it is: Everywhere I turn these days, I read about how people battled or fought cancer, and won. The military metaphor sounds apt: this is a deadly enemy that wants to see me killed—but I’m supposed to kill it instead, and thereby win the day for my side. Only it doesn’t work like that. I’m no soldier fighting an enemy army. I’m more like the battlefield, with both sides—the doctors on the one hand, the disease on the other—lobbing artillery shells into my gut. The doctors are the real soldiers; they’re actively fighting the disease. And the disease is certainly active: cancer cells may not exercise conscious choice, but they behave like an intelligent force that plots and pursues destruction.
In the midst of all that activity, patients are pretty much passive. The disease makes its moves; the docs make theirs: my job is to sit there and take it, to be the territory over which they fight. So, every time I go to the hospital for another test or injection or appointment, I feel a little less human, a little more like an object rather than a subject. I wish it were otherwise: being a soldier is better than being a patient. But that isn’t the way the system works.
To put it another way, cancer treatment is like medical treatment more generally, only more so. Patients tell doctors how they feel, and the doctors do things to them, first to figure out what’s wrong and later to fix it. Watch “House,” and you’ll see what I mean: on that show as, often, in real life, the patient’s job is to lie in a hospital bed, throw up, and bleed. The doctors monopolize the action. That’s a pretty good deal for the doctors. For patients, not so much.
I don’t think this is anyone’s fault. Cancer treatment is what it is—the doctors do what they do because they’re trying to give people like me the best possible shot at survival. It’s not their fault that the best treatments consist of doctors doing things to patients, not patients doing things for themselves. Still, while that state of affairs may be unavoidable, I don’t have to like it.
Other patients can battle their diseases if they like. Me, I want to be more engaged in my battles. If I can’t do that here, if I have to sit back and let other forces make war on my body, maybe that means I need to find another fight. Preferably, one that gives me more of a job to do.
Comments ( 3 )
Although you do not have control over the direct treatment of cancer, you still have freedom over your emotions and how you respond to the disease. In this way, you have an active job in the fight and can still be engaged. This, I would say, is the most important job - even more important than treatment administration.
Best of luck to you.
Posted by Sylwia M | March 23, 2008 8:10 PM
It's the waning moments of Easter 2008, so I'll leave you with this thought: You are engaged in a battle that you cannot possibly lose. Literally.
There are two possible outcomes.
(1) Your body rids itself of the cancer and you have more time on earth with your family, friends, your scholarship, arts and literature, good food, etc., etc.,
Or
(2) The day you return home to heaven comes a lot sooner than anticipated.
With choices like that, how can a person lose!
Oh yeah, there is the whole ordeal of the terrible, excruciating, other-worldly pain that will be experienced getting to whichever of the two destinations you arrive at. But this is one case where the destination is a whole lot more important than the journey.
I hope this isn't perceived as being cruelly flippant. It wasn't meant to be. Happy Easter.
Posted by Rhodium Heart | March 24, 2008 2:11 AM
i'm to teach class in 20 minutes -- before my tenure committee, incidentally -- but i just learned of your illness and couldn't delay saying that -- having witnessed for a semester your energy and enthusiasm and wit (all of which i mimic, badly, as best i can) -- it's hard to envision you "passive" at any level.
Even if it's the doctors who truly end up winning your war, what's important to me (and many others) is that it be won, and fast. And if, per standard cancer myths, you end up getting great credit for that victory, might i suggest that it's some form of psychic and inadequate battle pay -- which, Jerry Orbach notwithstanding -- your perseverance in the struggle certainly merits.
Get well soon. And thanks for the blog.
Posted by A Former Student | March 25, 2008 8:51 AM