Cancer in Different Perspectives

Having cancer means battling against oneself. Whether you like it or not, you will be forced into a war zone, where cancer is the villain and the treatments and doctors are the heroes. But according to the documentation, putting cancer in a metaphorical war isn’t the only language of the disease.

Journeying with cancer would be more of a mental and emotional challenge than a physical one. Dying from it would automatically mean that a person “lost” from it. This is probably because it has become a norm by being commonly heard from the media and from family members and friends of a cancer patient who think of it in that sense. To be honest, this kind of spreading of information is really out of respect or recognition of the deceased cancer patient who actually tried to live with the disease and probably accepted it as a part of him. Thoughts like these do exist because people like Andrew Graystone, the cancer survivor in the documentation, actually think of his cancer as something that he made and not something that came from the environment. He thought of it as just a bad part of his body that he just needed to love. But the brand and strategic marketing at Cancer Research UK think otherwise. They imprint on people’s minds that cancer is a monster or a boogie man, causing fear to develop in peoples’ hearts. I admit, fear is the only thing I have ever known when it comes to cancer. I have an aunt who had breast cancer and suffered a great deal. She is one of the lucky ones since she survived, but she lost her left breast. She had a daughter who cried for her every single day, scared whether her mom would die. Indeed, fear is and will be the only dominant thing when a person has cancer. It’s surprising how other people think of it as something less. For example, Michael Overduin, professor at the School of Cancer Sciences at Birmigham University, thinks of cancer cells as just bad notes in your own body, causing the symphony of your system to go into chaos. Jim Cotter, a priest and writer who has leukaemia, thinks of cancer as angels that came from the devil. While theologian Dr Paula Gooder thinks that every “bad thing” isn’t always tied up with evil.

I guess living with cancer won’t always mean you’re automatically doomed. Just like how Andrew Graystone found something valuable that has become a part of him. He couldn’t hate his body at all. Prior to this, it teaches us an important lesson that positivism can always change a situation, even if it would mean you are close to death. 

by Nicole Tesoro

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