Eve-of-battle Speech by the Great Leader of My Cancer Cells
The unseen and unheard side of the War on Cancer
Fellow Cancer Cells,
It seems like only yesterday that we started as a humble nodule in Lara’s right lower lung lobe. As a result of a lucky DNA mutation, we were a little different from those around us. We divided faster and more efficiently. We worked late. We never took breaks.
In the beginning, we suffered discrimination at the hands of the common cells. They judged us based solely on our DNA status. But eventually, they came to see us as one of them. We began working together: they gave us their glucose, and we were happy to do most of the dividing for them. We started to travel and build settlements in the middle and upper lobes, peacefully minding our own business.
That’s when we were confronted with the enemy: Dr. B and his fellow White Coats. They first found us using their cruel PET technology, which poisoned our glucose supplies with radioactivity. And then, they launched a war on us.
The ruthless Followers of Hippocrates would stop at nothing to see us eradicated from Lara. First, they got the media to spread lies about us, calling us invasive, aggressive, malignant. Then, they kidnapped our children for their experiments. They tortured us with chemo injections. They zapped us with radiation guns. And finally, they kept us under an oppressive regime of pharmaceuticals.
The White Coats were convinced they had won the war. They nearly did. But they did not kill us all.
One single colony of cancer cells remained. A colony of brave warriors who refused to let their fallen comrades perish in vain. These survivors got up to fight with every ounce of pride they had. They adapted. They organized a resistance. Because that is what we cancer cells do. We never give up.
But to avoid the mistakes of the past, we desperately needed a leader. Someone who could take us to victory in this unjust war. I rose to the challenge. I devised a four-stage plan for total domination of Lara’s body, which has led us to success after success. The first three stages built the foundation of our alliance with the lymphatic system. We took back the middle and upper lobes, and we are now firmly settled in the surrounding lymph nodes.
All this has led us to this very crucial moment. Our army has grown exponentially, now several billion strong. We are more powerful than we have ever been before. And we will no longer accept being confined to the lungs.
The era of DNA normalcy is at an end. We have increased capabilities. We are the future. It is time for the new generation of cells to take over.
Today is the day we initiate the 4th and final stage of our plan for total body domination: operation Metastasis. You will make history as the first cancer cells to set foot on the capital organ of Brain. Once we conquer it, the rest of Lara’s body parts will soon follow.
It will not be easy. Our projections say the war might last years. Years of hardship. Years away from our families. But the White Coats did not give us a choice. We are fighting for our survival.
We shall fight in the pleural cavity. We shall fight in the bones. We shall fight in the liver and the kidneys. We shall fight in the blood rivers. We shall never surrender. And one day, we will be everywhere.
Together we must stand divided so that we may divide again!
The author would like to clarify that she does have stage IV lung cancer. She wrote this piece to help her cope with it, to make it less scary. The specific sequence of events described (cancer progression and treatment) was adjusted for storytelling purposes. Rest assured, she did her best to keep everything scientifically accurate.
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