CANCER SECRETS? WHO KEEPS THOSE TO THEMSELVES?

Cancer secrets are important, but not if they’re not shared.

The big cancer secret is being frightened to death from the start, but share that and everyone gets spooked.

Are you someone who enjoys the unsolicited opinions of strangers and acquaintances? If so, I can’t recommend cancer highly enough. You won’t even have the first pathology report in your hands before the advice comes pouring in. Laugh and the world laughs with you; get cancer and the world can’t shut its trap.

Suddenly everyone turns into a cancer expert. It amazes me how versatile amateur medical experts are, from covid to cancer.

They can’t help it, but maybe they ought to try harder.

Join a support group, make a collage, make a collage in a support group, collage the shit out of your cancer.

Atlantic Monthly ran a story called “I’LL TELL YOU THE SECRET OF CANCER,” which I’ll help out in this post, beginning with the idea of ‘my cancer,’ or ‘your cancer.’

I was advised on how to talk about cancer. The biggie was don’t personalize it with a claim of possession. It doesn’t belong to anyone, it just shows up. But if someone wants to claim cancer, it’s the oncologists.

And they can have it. If you find yourself in a position of cancer patient, try and stay out of their way. It’s their cancer now, and they’ll try to kill it dead, instead of the other way around.

Listen to the docs, not the well-meaning ‘helpers.’

Much of the advice was bewildering, and all of it was anxiety-producing. In the end, because so many people contradicted one another, I was able to ignore most of them.

Who not to ignore:

The radiation oncologist who reminds you to get on the ball because, “That tumor isn’t going to shrink itself.”

The chemo oncologist who says, “If you can’t maintain your weight we’ll have to take you off the treatment plan.”

They knew cancer secrets.

When it’s Go-Time on cancer the radiation man is set to aim a beam at a specific body part. In cases for neck cancer, HPV 16 neck cancer specifically, the magic number is thirty-five beams.

The chemo man works in three doses of black juice among the radiation hits.

But it doesn’t start out that way:

People get diagnosed with cancer in different ways. Some have a family history, and their doctors monitor them for years. Others have symptoms for so long that the eventual diagnosis is more of a terrible confirmation than a shock. And then there are people like me, people who are going about their busy lives when they push open the door of a familiar medical building for a routine appointment and step into an empty elevator shaft.

It’s like Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire where you go down, down, down, and the flames went higher. And it burns, burns, burns.

Caitlin Flanagan Tells Cancer Secrets

Cancer occurs when a group of cells divide in rapid and abnormal ways. Treatments are successful if they interfere with that process.

I’ll take it another step: Treatments are successful if you stay out of the way and show up on time.

It’s not about feelings, emotions, or dread, but they’re all present and accounted for. Just show up. You don’t have to be cheerful, uplifting, or ‘on top of things.’ Showing up is the big job.

When I began to understand that attitude doesn’t have anything to do with survival, I felt myself coming up out of deep water. I didn’t cause my cancer by having a bad attitude, and I wasn’t going to cure it by having a good one.

The more I read, the more I liked this Flanagan.

I’m an attitude guy, and often feel it’s overdone in the sports and television church worlds. The coach urges his team to dig deep for a win; the televangelist urges watchers to dig deep for a donation. Neither sounds like a cancer cure.

Flanagan got some cancer counseling to stay on track:

Maybe I couldn’t think my way out of cancer, but wasn’t it still important to be as good a person as I could be? Wouldn’t that karma improve my odds a little bit?

(Coscarelli) told me that, over the years, many wonderful and generous women had come to her clinic, and some of them had died very quickly. Yikes. I had to come clean: Not only was I un-wonderful. I was also kind of a bitch.

Who Isn’t Kind Of A Bitch With Cancer Secrets

Coming to grips with cancer means hanging on like your life depends on it. Hang tight to choke out cancer, burn it up, shut it down, and do it the next day and day after.

God love her, she came through with exactly what I needed to hear:  “I’ve seen some of the biggest bitches come in, and they’re still alive.”

And that, my friends, was when I had my very first positive thought. I imagined all those bitches getting healthy, and I said to myself, I think I’m going to beat this thing.

People need help, but too often don’t know what, or where to find it.

I found it in the radiation waiting room where a man waited for his name to be called for treatment. I showed up and sat down next to a lady reading a magazine. She wasn’t there for treatment. I could tell because she didn’t have a gown on.

The man waiting spent his time talking to the television news on the new president. The time was January, 2017.

He repeated the same thing, “Now we have a man in the White House, a real man.”

I quietly asked the lady if he was talking to her. She said no, then added in a louder voice, “We’ve had a real man in the office the last eight years. A good man, a decent man. President Obama.”

The other patient was an older man and turned into an older man bitch when he rolled out accusations of freeloading, stealing, lazy, on the lady next to me. And me?

She quietly said, “He’s all yours now,” before getting up and leaving to find the neighbor she drove to treatment.

What Kind Of Cancer Bitch?

Up until then I’d worked on my attitude and kept myself in check. The furthest I’d go was talking about the causes of HPV 16 cancer with other patients, which embarrassed my wife to no end.

Now I was alone with a real piece of work. I could either sit quietly until my name, or his name, was called, but I heard another calling. Something primal, deep down, wanted out. I’d been taking the cancer treatment beatdown like a good soldier, and now this guy spouts off on a woman doing good work in the fight?

I wanted to fuck this bully up, which is not a very therapeutical thought. We started out like I was talking to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver: “Are you talking to me?” the old man asked. It was the two of us.

I asked what was wrong with him, which led to talk about his wife, kids, dog, and mom. It was the classic shit talking line-up of topics to make people angry, except he didn’t have a wife, kids, or dog. And his mom had just died.

We weren’t getting along when my name was called and I walked with the tech toward the radiation room.

“There’s a guy back there having a bad day.”

“Okay.”

“He seems angry.”

“David, we monitor the waiting room with audio and video. We heard what you said to him.”

“Maybe I ought to apologize?”

“He’s been driving people out of that room since the day he showed up. You’re the first who didn’t leave and wait in reception like the lady before you. I think you might have helped him, but you did help anyone else who might be in the room with him again.”

“What should I do?”

“How about some radiation?”

“Let’s go.”

That was the day cancer secrets added a little extra wind in my sails.