The thing about having cancer is that you aren't you any more.
It's not that the doctors and nurses don't care, or that the cancer 'navigator'/coordinator doesn't mean well. It's that they don't know you. It's the cancer that they are familiar with, so that's where the primary relationship gets played out.
They talk at you, but they are talking to the Cancer. It's the Cancer that is treated, the Cancer that is scanned, the Cancer that is irradiated, the Cancer that is measured and cut and biopsied and checked out on a constant basis. The Cancer gets the diagnosis and the prognosis. The Cancer's stats determine the strategy for the battles to come.
You are the transport system and the battleground over which the war is fought. But as mere territory, you have little say in the process - unless you revolt and refuse to be treated at all, which of course leaves you alone and more or less in the dark.
It's nothing personal.
Well, except when the bills start coming in...
1 comment:
You have a gift with words. You sum up the problem of treatment as it exists in our culture...perhaps it will change when it gets defined so articulately.
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