Why is cancer so scary?
Because you could die? Obviously. Stupid question, right? Well, no actually. There are lots of things you can die from that people aren’t really that afraid of. Murder by a spouse, errant buses, choking on a pen lid (like your teacher always threatened). But people, it seems, are really petrified of cancer.
I’ve had lots of meetings at work where we have come back to the question “Why is cancer so scary?” (this is because I work at a medical research charity, not because we like to ponder deep and meaningful life questions. We often just discuss cake). We’ve come up with lots of ideas and suggestions, ranging from people not understanding cancer (so it seems scary), to the complex language (scary words), to the images associated with it (scary photos of manky lungs on a cigarette packets), but I have my own theories.
Cancer is scary because it so is familiar.
It’s not that everyone knows someone who’s had cancer, it’s that everyone knows someone who’s died from cancer. And a cancer death is not gentle. It’s (usually) not sudden. So, when you find out that you have cancer, or when you tell someone you have cancer, you can almost see their brain cataloging all the people they know who died from it. And then they project that onto you and you get The Look. I’ve written about this before and it’s one of the worst parts of having cancer: having to tell people that you have it and then you have to look after their emotions.
Cancer is scary because it is a thief.
Cancer steals you away. It steals things from you that make you You, bit by bit. Your hair. Your energy. Your image. Your sense of taste. Your social life. Your sense of humour (it’s difficult to find something funny when you’re trying not to vomit). But the worst part is, you’re still alive to feel annoyed at this shell of a person that you have become, this husk. Ok, so it’s not the worst part, it would be worse to be dead, but it’s pretty shitty.
Also, you become a Cancer-Bore (it’s a bit like when you’re planning your wedding and you can’t believe people don’t want to talk at length about invitations, and someone, probably your sister, tells you to shut up because there are more important things to worry about). You bore people with chemo chat and cancer details. No-one tells you to shut up because You Have Cancer and they are trying to be supportive, but it means that cancer nicks that snarky friend who is afraid to be sarcastic. Cancer robs you of that funny cousin who stops calling because they don’t know what to say. Cancer steals the lovely taste of a gin and tonic on a Friday night because now everything tastes weird. That’s just rude.
Cancer is scary because it is ugly.
You can dress it up in as many “You rock that headscarf!”, and “You look so good without hair!” positive comments as you like, but if you like it so much, you shave your head. Go on, I’ll wait…
Didn’t think so. There’s a reason people get paid money to shave their heads for charity. Even Natalie Portman’s character cried when they shaved her head in that film with the masked guy, and she is so beautiful she makes my eyes hurt.
After chemotherapy, I’m grey. Really pale with massive bags under my eyes that no amount of Clinique is going to shift. Hell, I could go for that Creme De La Mer one that costs over a grand, and still look like something that lives under a bridge. I’m not looking for you to disagree here, I promise you, that’s how I look. And it’s always there in the mirror. I can’t ignore it and neither can people who see me.
Put it this way: Do you ever cry about something? I don’t know, the kids are being a pain, or your cake went flat, or that time you dropped all your notes during that really important presentation (you know, the one where you’d prepped so much that you didn’t sleep, so you drank loads of coffee and that’s probably why you got the shakes and dropped all your notes). So you headed to the loos and pulled yourself together by giving yourself a long look in the mirror and a few deep breaths? Well, when I do that, the person looking back doesn’t look like me. They look like cancer. I can’t even pull myself together like I used to.
Cancer is scary because the treatment is dire.
And long. In fact, most of the things you fear about cancer, are actually related to the treatment.
You will feel tired, sick, and moody, you will cry because you can’t get the lid off the jam, you will draw your eyebrows on one day and only realise at 4pm that they are skewiff (that might be a Wenglish word, see: wonky, uneven, bodged) and all of your statements have come out like questions. You will burst into tears in the doctors, you will throw something at the your husband, and you will close yourself in the loo and hope your baby plays quietly for just 5 minutes in the high chair while you lie on the cool, cool floor of the next room.
It’s relentless and inconvenient and it’s in a hospital. The thing that will ultimately make you better (you hope), will first make you feel a whole lot worse. Because you often feel fine, at first, when you have cancer. You have to actually choose to subject yourself to the treatment. You even have to sign a disclaimer form before you start that lists all the side effects (like I imagine ailing celebrities do before they go on The Jump and break all the bones in their legs because: airtime).
Cancer is scary because it might kill you
Uh, not going to explain this.
Cancer is scary because it might not kill you.
If I survive this cancer. If it goes away or shrinks with chemo, I then have to decide what to do with my breasts. Weird sentence.
If I have more children, if I can have more children after chemo has hammered my ovaries, I will then go through the heart ache of my decision (whether I decided to keep my 60% chance of cancer breasts or not) throughout the pregnancy, birth and early life of my child(ren). My body won’t change in the same way when I’m pregnant, I won’t be able to breast feed, I won’t even get amazing post-birth boobs. I will also soon need to think about whether or not I want to have my ovaries removed. My family history and genetics suggest this would be a good idea but it’s hardly a casual choice at 32.
Cancer is scary because it stays with you.
I will always have Had Cancer. I will always be your Friend That Had Cancer That Time. This year of my life will never be forgotten and I will live with the fear of cancer returning for the rest of my life.
Once we feel strong enough, we might have to consider what this means for our daughter’s future health. She has a 50:50 chance of inheriting my crappy genes. Cancer is the smack in the teeth that just keeps on smacking.
Cancer is scary because we know just enough.
As you’ve read this, if you’ve got this far, you might have thought “I know all this”. And that’s just it, we all feel like we know cancer a bit. Just enough to be scary but not enough to calm our fears.
We know that the treatment is dire, we know that statistics can be a bit ropey, we know that it’s hard and we know that some (plenty, sometimes) people come out the other side. But we know that some (plenty, sometimes) people don’t. And that scares the shit out of us.
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