CANCER:
A friend who warns?
Or a foe with thorns!
The never uttered word: Cancer
The word that fills our heart with grief
That turns our feet cold and numb
The word never spoken
The word that haunts and shatters…
Why?
How long?
How long shall we go on fearing?
How long shall we keep running away?
The more we run, the faster it chases
The more you try to forget the quicker it re-appears!
Perhaps not in you, but in someone else
Not in your family but in someone far away
Like today …
I got the news of her metastatic cancer
But did it scare me off?
No, no more.
Now it invokes anger and disgust
The anger that returns
Every time an acquaintance is diagnosed
Every time cancer takes a life
Is my anger directed only towards cancer?
I guess not.
My anger is of dual nature
One towards cancer
For taking a life
For hurting a family
Disgust for my inability to fight
To throw it out forever
My anger is also directed towards our society
That stops us from speaking the C word
The society that creates the so called norms
Of not speaking about our body
What is cancer after all?
Only a cell
A kind of cell that knows not how to multiply
The ugly, shapeless cell that moves in the body
For it is homeless …
No organ wants it around
Therefore, it moves fast
So as not to be caught
Multiplies fast
For its own survival
For its own existence
Unaware how it harms
Unaware of the havoc it creates
But that one irregular cell in the body
Alarms us right from its birth
Come on, it is time for a checkup
For Clinical Examinations
For Screening Tests
But we pay no attention
We are the ones who neglect its presence
We are the ones who wait for it to grow
We find time to party, to shop
And even for beauty parlors
But we hesitate to visit the doctor
Until the cell changes into a tumor
Until it gets large and uncontrollable
Until its treatment gets out of hand
So I seek an answer
Is cancer a friend
For giving warning signs before its arrival ?
Or a foe
For entering our body
Simply to make a room for itself !
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