Monday, July 01, 2013

Dear Cancer

Dear Cancer,
You may have heard us talking about you.  Hi.  Yes, we were talking about you behind your back. In some cases someone, possibly even me, may have employed a choice swear word or too.  And most recently we called you stupid.  But, on further examination, I have decided it is much more likely you are ill informed.  So, if you will accept my apologies for mean things I may have said in the past, I will attempt to explain my position. 
I understand that you have a longstanding tradition with humans, and well, other animals.  And humans have often not been very nice to you.  We carve you away, blast you with radiation, and attack you with medications.  Here's why - if we don't we die.  Now, sure all animals die.  But, I'm sure you can understand why we are not fans of dying.  And without you we tend to die less fast than we do with you. 
But here's the thing, as a non-communicable disease when you kill off your host, you die too.  So, this is what led us to use the s word.  But I wandered if maybe we could talk about this.  Because if you weren't so gung-ho in taking over everything and therefore killing off your host, we wouldn't have to take such drastic measures in response.  So, I would like to suggest that maybe we could reach some kind of detente. Otherwise, well, I'm gonna go back to the name calling.