AWARENESS

6/52 Project Zen Cancer Awareness Day

4 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "6/52 Project Zen Cancer Awareness Day"

If I received money every time someone asked me why we don’t have a cure for cancer yet, I’d have enough money to run away to Italy. Or, at the very least, pay off some credit card debt. I usually just shake my head and answer with “I don’t know” because it is the easiest/laziest answer I can give to someone. I don’t think many people realize that the term ‘cancer’ is a very simplified word to describe a whole giant group of diseases. The thing that groups these diseases together is a common root cause: abnormal cell growth. That abnormal cell growth can be caused by genetics, viruses, chemicals, obesity, autoimmune disorders, hormones, and physical agents like asbestos or BPA. Any one of those things can set off a chain reaction in one cell that leads to a mutation in an oncogene that can have various results. A daughter cell inherits the messed up gene and then goes hay wire The mutated gene causes the cell signal other cells. The gene mutation can make that cell start dividing. A mutation any where in the oncogene can lead to multiple situations. Basically, it’s a molecular level choose your own adventure in cancer. Cancer is fucking complicated.

That’s why we don’t have a cure for cancer.

Yesterday, Josephine and I were finishing up watching CBS Sunday morning and we’d reached the part where they show this week’s calendar. That’s how I know that today is Cancer Awareness Day. When it was announced on TV I thought “great! I’ll just add that to the list of things I’m totally aware of this week.” Like for instance, how Chris would be forty eight on Wednesday. The day after Chris’s very last birthday, I spent the whole day crying. The. Entire. Day. I just cried and cried and cried and cried. By the time Chris actually did die, two days later, I was a complete shell of a human being. The nurse told me Chris had passed and I looked at the hospice care worker and said “what do I do now?” She thought I was asking about who comes and takes the body and all of that other stuff you have to take care of when someone dies. I kind of meant that, but I was really curious about what exactly I was going to do now, in general, for the rest of my life. These are the thoughts the I am very much aware of every year during this particular week in February.

The thing that I am usually least aware of during this week is what killed Chris. Abnormal cell growth formed a tumor on Chris’s liver right around the junction of where the left and right hepatic duct meet up. This meant that he was no longer able to excrete liver wastes and bile, which aids in digestion. Still to this day, I have a hard time admitting that cancer was the cause of Chris’s death. It just happened way too fast and without any warnings for me to be able to admit that. Also, at the end of the day, no one was really able to tell us what had caused his cancer. They found a small amount of cancer cells in esophagus and one specialist tried to link the tumor to those. They also talked about hepatitis B. If you read this article on Viruses and Human Cancer in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, then the whole hep B theory makes the most sense. Don’t worry. I was vaccinated for hep B and C ages ago. Chris’s vaccination history was a bit sketchy. No one could say for sure what vaccines he’d had over the years.

Viruses are the cause of around fifteen percent of cancers. Epstein Barr, hepatitis B and C, human papilloma virus (HPV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The hepatitis viruses and HPV are about the only ones with vaccines. They can all be prevented by using safe sex and safe needle practices. So maybe instead of focusing so much awareness on finding a cure for cancer, maybe we should be doing more to prevent the cancers we know how to prevent.

KNOWING TOO MUCH BUT NOT ENOUGH

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * Oct 8, 2018 at 5:56pm UTC

1 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram

We are in lab meeting and one of my colleagues is doing a presentation on a couple of projects she’s working on with another lab. This research is cancer research. I sit there and listen to her talk about the proliferation of cancer cells in the presence or absence of a certain drug or inhibitor. I stay focused to what she is saying, really listening to this very interesting preliminary data, but somewhere in the back of my brain the voices of past doctors start to whisper. On the outside, I look normal. I sit there nodding my head in understanding, asking questions. On the inside, it feels like pieces of myself are just breaking off and dropping to the floor. By the end of the meeting “there’s nothing we can do” is roaring in my head and rage is boiling under my skin. I find myself sitting on the toilet in a bathroom stall, sobbing. Hot tears burning my cheeks.

I sit and listen to these research talks and think how is it possible that there was nothing that could be done. This is followed up with guilt over not trying hard enough. I failed to exhaust all resources and just listened to what the three different doctors had to say. I didn’t load us into the car and drive across the country to one of the best cancer treatment facilities. I didn’t even try any crack-pot cures like flushing Chris’s system with wheat grass. I had a woman I used to work with ask me if she could come and do a laying of hands kind of healing. I politely declined the offer, but now I wonder if that would have been the thing to cure him. Instead, I let Chris die. In The Mountain Between Us, Idris Elba’s character is a neurosurgeon whose wife died of brain cancer. The guy was top in his field and he couldn’t save his wife. I’m mediocre in my field and think I should have been able to perform miracles.

These are moments when I hate my line of work. I hate knowing how white blood cells are recruited to dead tissue and inevitably trigger cancer cells to start dividing. Your own healthy cells do you in. Chris wrecked his scooter and cracked a couple of ribs. Was this when it started? Did he damage his liver enough in the accident to trigger cancer cells to start dividing? We would have had a better chance of winning if I had pushed him harder to go to a doctor earlier. Could’ve should’ve would’ve. This one research presentation can send me spiraling down into the great unknown of things I should have done better. It’s like stepping into quicksand, except I don’t struggle. I just give into the undertow of being sucked under. Actually, that’s not true. Quicksand isn’t really that hard to escape and people only die from quicksand drownings in the movies. Also, I have no idea what it feels like to step into quicksand. I can only imagine that it is very much like the slow sinking feeling of become cold and numb on the inside.

The next day, I’m sitting at the counter at Heirloom, writing in my Fortune Cookie journal. I catch the lyrics of the song that is playing.

“Well, sometimes love is all it’s supposed to be. But it can break you. Remember, take care of your heart and cry. Oh, somehow we’ll survive.”

I think about all of the chest opening poses I do in my yoga practice, always trying to open my heart. I went to a yoga workshop this year that focused on spinal alignment. The teacher’s cue for pulling the bottom ribs together was to push your chest back, closing the heart a bit. This was the opposite of what I had been taught and what I had been practicing. It was painful and by the end of the workshop, my ribcage ached. I’ve opened my heart so much now that it is flat. I picture the structure of the heart folded from origami paper, slowly unfolding and laying itself open. Wrinkled, but spread out flat. What can that unfolded origami heart hold? Not much. My heart is laid out flat, not holding much of anything. I haven’t been taking care of my heart. I pretend that I am. I plaster a smile or at least an optimistic look on my face and go about my day as if my heart is normal and not made of paper and crumpled.

Remember, take care of your heart and cry. Oh, somehow we’ll survive.”

I’m prepared for the paper cuts I’m going to get while folding my paper heart back into shape.