Let’s talk about C
There are certain topics people avoid discussing unless it’s absolutely necessary. Two of them happen to be disease and death. Curiosity tends to peak when the former leads to the latter.
“What happened?”
“Why couldn’t we…?”
“Who was treating her?”
Blah blah and more ad hoc blahs waiting for the funeral. It’s not the enquirers’ fault that they are out of their depth. Death often does that to those who are still breathing.
Things get uber-uncomfortable when the deceased fought cancer. Those who call themselves cancer survivors do so, not because they choose to, but because our vocabulary is limited. We can’t possibly imagine how the battlefield feels like when staying miles away from the fatal frontier. The pain they go through—even the otherwise effective adjective ‘sheer’ can’t do justice to the discomfort that cancer patients experience in their bout for life — not knowing whether it’s worth their time. More often than said, it’s the loss of dignity that haunts the cancer warriors. To be dependent on others for the tiniest of needs gets harrowing after a while.
So, how do i know this? Or should i say, portend to know all of this?
Apart from the plethora of case studies in movies and documentaries, i completed a heavy book recently. Some books drain you and for a good reason. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies undoubtedly belongs to this category. A tome so heavy that, if read carefully, it turns into an unbearable crown. And if you’re like me, you’ll go around spilling nuggets from its pages on everybody within your perimeter. As one can guess, it’s about cancer. A meticulous biography, if you may. The details are tiring but immensely engaging. It makes you acknowledge the army of cells inside you that are fighting for you 24/7. Until the moment they stop doing so. By the end of this book, you’ll be flushed with so many technical terms that you’d feel like you’re a cast member of House (2004–12). For me, the bit that stood out is the excruciating pain involved in cancer. You think of consumption (TB), you imagine a person coughing to his end. You think of dysentery, you imagine a person crapping his gut out. You think of dengue, you imagine a person quite literally on fire. You think of HIV/AIDS and you imagine yourself climbing the higher moral ground. Of course, your imaginations don’t have to be cent-percent accurate. It’s difficult because we not only shy away but also encourage others to shy away from such gloomy topics. Why talk about the sad things in life instead of focusing on the brighter side, right?
Wrong.
What we deliberately ignore grows stronger in our ignorance. Would you know what to do if an epileptic person had a seizure in the train? Or a fellow customer seated two tables to your left starts choking on his food? OK. Let’s bring your skin into the game. Would you know how to react if your loved ones were to get a stroke in the house? Yes, calling the ambulance is a wise move but what about the time wasted in intermediacy? The reason why we are clueless during such moments is we’ve only prepared ourselves for life. We prefer to remain oblivious of death. We barely speak about it, let alone try to understand its countless tricks. Once we open our minds and look around, we might be able to grasp why things happen in the manner they do.
Cancer could very well be matchless in its prowess but we don’t know the future. Who knows, something more debilitating could take over the mantle of suffer? Whatever it is and whatever it’s going to be, the point being the commoners ought to stare into the abyss. We can’t go on assuming we are here forever. Conversely, we can’t expect others to have the answers when we ourselves didn’t even bother to listen to the questions properly.
