+++++
I was in a week long photography workshop last year when a guy confessed that he was very nervous about showing his work to his classmates. To put him at ease, I said, "The great thing about these workshops is that no matter how bad you are at photography, you will always find someone in the class who is worse." He said later that it was true. Out of 25 photographers, there are always at least 4 whose work is so bad that everyone else in the class avoids embarrassment.
In a way, the same dynamic took place when I walked into the Cancer Center. No matter how sorry you feel for yourself, there is always someone, in fact many people, who are in much worse shape. The scene gives you perspective you didn't have before you walk in the door.
By the way, why would you call something a 'cancer center'. It sounds like a place you go to meet cancer instead of cure it! How about "The Wellness Center" or something that allows for a vision of better outcome?
The veterans were prepared. They had thermal underclothes and many layers. The room is cold and I was in there a long time. After receiving an injection of sugar laced radio isotope, I was put in a comfortable chair to wait an hour while the liquid moved around my body. Then, I went into a cat scan machine for 45 minutes. The idea is that the injection would be ingested by cancer cells faster than normal cells. In the scan, the nuclear material lights up. This exposes the cancer clusters. I learned something critical. Cancer cells are voracious. They absorb what you eat faster than other cells and therefore grow fast and choke off the organs that they reside in. I imagine that's why chemotherapy works. You lace sugar with poison and the cancer eats the poison faster than your other cells. The cancer cells die. The healthy cells get sick, but they recover. What make a cancer cell dangerous - it's voracious appetite- is also the vulnerability for killing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment