quotations about cancer
We "need" cancer because, by the very fact of its incurability, it makes all other diseases, however virulent, not cancer.
GILBERT ADAIR
"Under the Sign of Cancer", Myths and Memories
Cancer ... the process of creation gone wild, I thought.
PHILIP K. DICK
Radio Free Albemuth
Cancer does not have a face until it's yours or someone you know.
ANTHONY DEL MONTE
Cancer is a "battle." People with cancer are "fighters," and if they don't die from the disease, they are "survivors." These are ... the words most people in our culture use to talk about the disease. So what's the problem? The problem is one of language. We have a tendency to foist heroism upon people with cancer in a way that might, at first glance, seem generous and celebratory. But it can also be damaging.... I'm sure there are people with cancer who appreciate the gladiatorial allegory. The everyday struggles people with cancer face--from the incapacitating side effects of treatment to the occasional proximity of death--may share more than a bit of common ground with actual soldiers fighting a war. And when I watched my mom face the disease, the word "fight" did, indeed, often strike me as an apt description of her efforts to get out of bed or eat a spoonful of yogurt. But saddling people with cancer with Herculean expectations fails to acknowledge that it is absolutely normal to feel afraid, to feel like you can't go on, to actually want to give up. And sometimes making this choice--if it can even be called that--is an OK thing to do, a humane response to an inhumane situation.
ELIZA BERMAN
"The Most Moving Thing About Stuart Scott's Speech at the ESPYs", Slate, July 17, 2014
We can have hope even while maintaining a negative--or sometimes simply realistic--attitude. For instance, if you're dying of cancer, you can still hope for pain relief. If you have a difficult-to-treat cancer, you can still hope for new treatments.
LORI HOPE
Help Me Live
Cancer is like a rogue wave, appearing unexpectedly on the horizon and then crashing in with full force over patient, family, and friends, shaking everything up for a while.
CATHERINE PHILLIPS
Calm Your Mind, Warm Your Heart
The cancer-is-war metaphor does not seem to allow space for the idea that in actual war, some soldiers die heroically for the larger good, no matter which side wins. War is death. In the cancer war, if you die, you've lost and cancer has won. The dead are responsible not just for getting cancer, but also for failing to defeat it.
ALANNA MITCHELL
Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer Myths