Cancerhood

Like many other places people do not choose to live, the cancerhood is a tough neighborhood with grim statistics. If you live in the cancerhood you are sometimes said to be "battling" it or perhaps learning to "accept" it. The battle metaphor can leave the false impression that some people in the cancerhood try -but fail- to fight off the disease. But you can't bootstrap your way out of the cancerhood. Not beating cancer is as much a failure as not winning the lottery. And to accept living in the cancerhood seems to suggest that you are okay with it somehow. But you accept living in the cancerhood the way you accept being caught in a cold rain with a book in your hand but no umbrella. You hunch, cover as best you can and run for shelter.

Outside of the cancerhood time feels faster or slower, it "flies by" or "crawls forward" depending on the joy of the moment. But in the cancerhood time doesn't feel relative. Time "sweats" and "shivers" in a series of  "let's get this over with" moments. Time idles in a forgettable haze. In the cancerhood time is wasting time thinking about trying not to waste time while wasting time. Cancerhood time is time spent thinking of ways not to think about the test results that will tell you if you will be spending more time in the cancerhood or possibly less. Cancerhood time is time spent worrying about work, money, and how it will affect your children, family and friends if you die.

Cancerhood with a capital -C- like Brotherhood or Fatherhood, is a lens through which you see people and they sometimes see you. Not everyone all the time, at least not if you have your hair, your weight, and a decent pallor. But when it is more than a passing encounter with a stranger, eventually you tell them even if they'd never know the difference. Maybe it's like a homosexual coming out of the closet; after a while trying to hide the fact is just too much work, and like sexuality cancer is a part of your identity that is complex, on your mind more than you'd like, and not of your choosing.

Sometimes when you tell people that you are a cancer survivor it evokes a facial expression that renders the Thomas Hardy poemThe Dead Man Walking. That's understandable. And the news makes trivial some topics that moments before seemed important to them. That's usually for the best. In any case, it is less awkward in the long run to be open about the issue.

The Cancerhood overlaps with and changes the way in which you see people and the world. Who wears a surgical mask to the grocery store, the pharmacy, on the bus, or to the holiday show at their kid's school? Unless you are a doctor or a dentist in the procedure room, it is odd, distracting, and even alarming to see someone wearing a surgical mask. But that's how it was for me when my blood was not right.

©2009

<>The author has been in complete remission from acute myelogenous leukemia since April 2008.