Dear Cancer:
Today I ask you to be your bold, defiant self. To be virulent, naked, unabashed. To stand up to the acidic forces that will wash over you to divest you from the bone that’s just been sampled from my body. When I look at the spot on my chest where doctors have stolen you away from, I realize that you likely weren’t deterred by the radiation beams that glided over me for months after my surgery. I wonder, if I had listened closer, could I have heard you laughing? No, radiation didn’t kill you. You nestled in and waited until the coast was clear. The chemo cocktail, that still seems to limit my hair growth, dissipated.
So now, I ask you to be a survivor, a thriver even. Stand up to the tests that you’ll be undergoing so my doctors and I can understand you better, what makes you tick, what makes you thrive, what makes you so darn resilient. This isn’t a request I will make often of you. But in this moment, I hope we both agree, your survival is paramount. Show us your stuff. Bare those steely, mutant strains of DNA that keep you unashamedly colonizing throughout my skeletal frame. Proudly declare your proteins and pathways, your growth factors and enzymes. This is no time for shyness; it’s a time for you to shine. Shine your bad self under the lens of the pathologist’s microscope so that he or she can give us an inkling into your inner workings – your drive, your motivation. What fuels you, what inspires you, what motivates you. I want to know all. I am not afraid and neither should you be.
So please, cancer, make this your best performance ever. In this moment, we are one. And the answers? Well they can wait until your show is over. This is your time to shine.
Curiously yours,
Breast Cancer Conscript
