Can You Kick Cancer's Ass?

 I’ve always been somewhat reluctant to use phrases like kick cancer's ass. There’s an ongoing debate in cancer survivorship and cancer communications circles about whether “violent” terms like battling cancer and fighting cancer do more harm than good. It casts people as winners who "won their fight against cancer' and losers who "lost their battle to cancer" and well, there's a side that says that's bad.  But I haven't avoided those terms because I’m concerned about offending people. Hell, it’s my cancer, and I’ll choose the language I want to use to describe it. 

No, I'm not worried about being on the wrong side of the debate, it’s just that I’ve never felt like I was doing much. I show up at appointments and people do things to me. They examine me; draw my blood; scan my body; discuss options; give me noxious chemotherapy; give me more drugs to counteract the side effects of the chemotherapy. And all along I’m just an innocent bystander except that I’m not a bystander. I'm in the middle of the crime scene, but I’m not doing anything. I’m just there being done to.

Finishing up round 4.
(Tony, Beth - notice the shirt)

Maybe part of it is because for the first 10 nearly 11 years of my Cancer “ journey" -- a word that I'm not too fond of --  there was little evidence of any fight. With the exception of that one course of chemo therapy in 2012/2013 -- and even through that, I had no outward symptoms,  and unless you were living in my house, you could have no clue that I was going through cancer unless you really probed.

I think another part of it is superstition. I've rooted on too many sports teams and watched too many games to know that you don't celebrate too early. You don't get too cocky, especially against a strong competitor. 

But now as I’ve gone through this much more serious bout, the imagery is ramping up. Hell, I even mistakenly typed battle instead of bout in the previous sentence at first. It seems unavoidable.

The thing is, as great as the scans were three weeks ago (see scans on this post), and as optimistic as I am that having finished round four today, the scans will remain clear in two weeks, I don’t really feel like I’m kicking cancer's ass. I feel like cancer is beating up on me and I’m just doing a good job of absorbing the blows.

I don’t want people to take that negatively, Or feel like they have to avoid saying things like "keep fighting" or "fuck cancer" or "kick cancer's ass" even.  But the truth is, there is a certain amount of helplessness that comes with any disease. You do what you can, you make smart choices, you try to stay mentally resilient, you lean on your friends and family, and you put your faith in the care of your care team. Thankfully, my care team at Dana-Farber is the best in the world.

--Michael