GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT #9…Face And Breast Cancer!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

So I had my face scraped on Monday (aka The Mohs Procedure) this week to destroy the basal cell sarcoma cells growing on my mug.

Afterwards, I walked around my school with two great-big, white gauze patches on my face.

Now, I work with teenagers and they are almost without exception body image conscious in the extreme, and many (if not all of them), exclaimed, “What’s wrong with your face?”

The obvious answer would have been, “Nothing, what’s wrong with yours?”

I restrained myself, replying instead, “I have skin cancer.”

The responses were startling. Ranging everywhere from, “Ewww!” to “My grandma had…” to “Oh! I’m so sorry!” These are adolescents from EVERY walk of life – internationals, recent immigrants, born-and-raised-heres, white, black, Mexican, Ecuadorian, rich and privileged, poor and homeless, and from every socioeconomic status and race you can ask about. They all understood; they all offered various degrees of sympathy (the ones who were grossed out covered their mouths in horror and apologized), and there were others as well, who totally ignored the elephant in the room (or the gauze on the face as the case  may be).

I got the same response when it became general knowledge that my wife had breast cancer.

For whatever reason, this horrendous disease unites people across all sorts of boundaries, imagined or real. This joins people into a cohesive mass that says only one thing, “I know someone with cancer, and I hate cancer.” It unites us in our Humanity through our vulnerability. Breast cancer, skin cancer, liver cancer, leukemia, brain cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer...and every other kind of cancer can strike any person, any where, any when. You can live in a New York penthouse and have 82.2 billion dollars and you can get cancer. You can live in the Congo-Kinshasa and make nothing a year and you can get cancer.


At this time in history, the only thing all Humans share unequivocally...is cancer.

As an aside: My wife and I are walking in the Cooper-Armstrong Relay For Life this spring 2015 and as with last year, we’re hoping people will sponsor us (we’ll be on the Cooper Faculty Team) so that someday – SOMEDAY – I won’t have to say:

“My _______  has skin cancer.”

Or “My ______ has breast cancer”.

Or even the euphemistic, “We’re gonna get rid of the Big C”.

Anyone care to join me?

Resource: https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/the-poorest-countries-in-the-world, http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

Image: http://wrex.images.worldnow.com/images/23784252_SA.jpg