Rhetoric of Cancer

Health is one of the most difficult topic to talk about, especially when you're talking to someone who is not just sick, but is terminally ill. One best example of this is conversing with a person who is suffering from cancer.

We all know what a cancer patient needs to undergo for his medication. Different medical test like blood test and etc, chemotherapy, other  radiation treatment and tons of expensive medicines are their "hope" of having longer life. Others may even need to undergo some major operations to treat their illness. But I have never seen a person who just accepted that he has cancer and it is already a part of his being.

  

Having listened to this Rhetoric of Cancer, it amused me how long a cancer patient could go just to have a normal life. It reached a point where that patient just accepted the fact that he has cancer and it is a part of him now. It seemed like they do not fear death nor they treat self-deception as a not-so-wrong belief. Cancer is never a battle that people suffering from it need not to fight it because in the end, they will lose certainly. Losing in a sense that they can survive it, but times that they suffered from all the medications, all the treatment they have undergone maybe also considered as the times when they can still enjoy their life, have fun and do the things that they wanted to do. Also, losing for they may really face death if the cancer stage is terminal and cannot be cured.

As I was doing this reflection paper, it really made me think which of the two was better. Fight it or just accept it? And I have come to conclude that neither of the two suits my kind of view about cancer. For me, I would like to set my mind that, yes, indeed, there is a need to fight cancer because we are talking about a life here. But also, there must also be acceptance, acceptance in a way that a cancer patient assent his condition and continue on doing what he needs and what he loves to do. I think that battling with cancer is never reason for dismissing the other things that could make you feel emotionally, psychologically or even physically better. 

Accept the fact that you have cancer, then fight it, have medications and treatments to stop it, but never ever let this be the reason on just focusing with battling your illness, because there other aspects of life that you may miss. These aspects are things  and times of your life that you can never change, you can never reverse or you can never go back to eventhough you surpass cancer or not.

This may be a very ideal disposition about cancer, but I assert, it may just be really the way it is. 

Xavier Noel Briones

2013-41022