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…
One of my fondest
memories as a kid is watching the movie FANTASTIC VOYAGE. In it, a group of
scientists and their ultra-futuristic laser-packing “submarine” are reduced to
cell size and injected into the blood vessels of a world diplomat in order to
destroy a blood clot in his brain.
What would a FANTASTIC
VOYAGE: Breast Cancer look like? I’m going to write a novel here, short chapter
by short chapter and I’m going to include the latest research and I’m going to
imagine the entire story here for your delectation. If you want to start at the
beginning, look left. Scroll down to LABELS. The first one is “A Fantastic
Cancer Voyage”. Click on it. Scroll to the bottom and you will find episode on.
Let me know what you think after you’ve read the whole thing!
Dr. Olubunmi Nwagbara studied the Reverend Dr. Isamar Noor
then said, “I hope so, Reverend. I hope that you’ll be praying to your God that
everything will be different after the surgery.”
He nodded and held up his tablet computer, saying, “It’s on
my list of things to be praying for.”
She grunted and couldn’t help but smile a bit. Then she
nodded and said, “Get out of here. You can join the rapidly growing crowd that
will be inside the sub.”
He bowed from the waist after standing – an amazingly
accurate and honorable Japanese gesture – and left her office. She stared after
him for fifteen seconds, then got back to work. She paused with her requisition
list, then made up another list: Herself, Hirini Kenana, Reverend Dr. Isamar
Noor. She pursed her lips. The team was decidedly in the opposition’s favor.
Not that either of the men would oppose her, but she didn’t like the balance of
the group she’d be sliding through the depths of Kim Lin Anzan’s bloodstream
and breasts with. In fact, the more she thought about it, the less satisfied
she was that so far herself and a couple of men would be the primary passengers
on a mission to destroy breast cancer.
She leaned back in her desk chair and stared out at the
sleet still whipping the Thirtieth Floor windows. She wasn’t here often, but
reserved the place for entertaining important donors, reporters and other
politicians. She lifted her tablet computer from the desk, put her feet up and
tapped the screen, projecting a list of men and women who’d assisted in
experimental picosub surgery in the past. Some of them wouldn’t be able to
stand the presence of a religious man – those she eliminated right away. For
all his philosophical yammering, the Dr. Reverend made a good foil to Kim Lin
Anzan’s Catholic-Buddhist-Hindu-Daoist world view. But she needed someone who
would be both tolerant of religion and invested in nanomedicine.
Tough combo because the relative invisibility of the
machinery and the electroencephalogram connection made it seem like magic. The
right couldn’t tolerate the a-religion of it; the left couldn’t tolerate
spiritualization of anything.
Three images finally fell out of the crowd: Dr. Mackenzie
Phan, Machig Rabten, P.A., and Dr. Yameri
Niazi. All three were oncology experts, Mac and Machig in breast cancer, Yameri
in metastatic breast cancer.
She kept Yameri after only a moment’s thought. There was a
good chance they’d meet metastatic cancers on their fantastic voyage through
Kim Lin’s body. She’d need someone
capable of both identifying the cancer and devising a way to deal with it. She
kept the other two as well, though. Mac was a master at theory, Machig at
application.
Besides, it would keep the men in check: four to two.
He intercom tweedled. She activated it from her tablet and
said, “What can I do for you Alex?”
Her boss’ image hovered over her tablet for a moment as he
looked at her. He scowled for a moment. He opened his mouth then shut it. She
frowned and said, “What?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re going to add your consciousness to the crowd I
already have in the sub.”
“What crowd?” She ticked off the names and he nodded,
saying, “Good. You’ll need someone who has politics on the brain amidst all you
squints.”
“‘Squints’?”
“Term from my favorite show as a kid – ‘Bones’. It’s what
the FBI guy called all your microscope guys – it’s what you always do when you’re
looking at your clues. You squint.”
She smiled, nodded, and said, “Perfect. Welcome to the team.
The membership is now closed.”
He drew a hand over his forehead and said, “Whew. Now that I
took care of that, you can get on to the real work.” He disappeared.
She said to the air, “Politics IS the real work, sweetie,
the rest is science and that’s the easy part.”
