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…That
was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across
my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared in
November of 2014.
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/
No comments:
Post a Comment