Not a Death Sentence

Something attracted me to to this article.  I guess I do read sensationalist news like everyone else.  

So mother abducts son to prevent him from receiving 'life-saving treatment'.  This is the actual text of another article I found.  Just by writing that, the reader must assume that the mother is crazy.  She's choosing to kill her son.  Everyone must be lining up with the doctors and, now, the judges to condemn her and her 'evil' choice.  Chemotherapy and radiation are 'treatments'.  It's okay to cut up his brain.  They even call her 'cancer mum'.  Wow, I didn't even notice that.  Disgusting.  Truly fucked.  

I guess I should write a letter to the editor.  

But I mostly want to write to Sally.  I want to tell her that as alone as she must feel, with the terrible choices that she has to make (or not make according to the judge), she is not alone.  She is not a 'cancer mum'.  She is not killing her son.  She is thinking hard about this, about these dismal choices.  She has seen him go through 'treatment' already.  She has to visit him in hospital every day with tubes coming out of his chest and head and beeping machines all around him.  Sally you are amazing, strong, beautiful.  You are a mother.  

Our culture (endless economic growth?) is cancer.  But that's another story . . .

To get personal (and I don't like to do this online), someone very very close to me has cancer (or whatever you want to say).  She was diagnosed going on nine years ago.  

Nine years.

Cancer it seems is not such a death sentence.  She has taught me that and so much more in these years.  I, like everyone else, assumed that when I got cancer (and who doesn't in this toxic culture) that I would be living under a death sentence.  She has taught me that fear is probably your worst enemy when you are diagnosed.  It is not a death sentence.  Don't ever forget that.  I won't.

It was breast cancer.  She wanted her breast removed and refused chemotherapy and radiation eight years ago.  The doctors showered her with fear and borderline hate for this choice.  One of them told her 'I never want to see you again'.  They denied her the surgery until it had spread, then they cut her up.  Now it's in her bones.  But she's still very much alive, slowing down for sure, sleeping more, not doing as much.  But she still writes to the prime minister every other day.

We joked the other day about her status as palliative.  She has been palliative for a long time.  She asked the palliative doctor if, since she keeps staying alive, she should be removed from the roll.  He said that if she's not dead by 2018 then they'll remove her.  Well I'm sure he didn't quite put it that way.  It's good to laugh anyway. 

I think we need to recognize that chemotherapy and radiation weaken our immune systems and can allow cancer to spread.  Combined with fear and worry, since we are psycho-physical beings, the disease spreads.  How many people have radiation and chemo and are pronounced cured only to have cancer return?  I think of Jack Layton.  Didn't he lead a stressful life before the end?  Was that good for his health?  And you can bet he ate organic.

But here we are in our thought prisons again.  There's only one way to 'battle' cancer.  Everything is civilized language: war, conquest, violence, only one way to live and be.  We all line up with the doctors and the media and isolate and marginalize (perhaps even criminalize) people who make different choices. 

And with a child, that's hard.  The hardest.  It's easy for me to talk, I make my own choices.  

Sally, I can't imagine what you are feeling.  And your dear son.  All this stress is filtering to him.  But I'm with you, a lot of us are.