A Letter to my Cancer

On 10 January 2014, I had a letter published in the DomPost Summer section:

Dear cancer,

When I first found out about you, I was so scared. I felt you held this enormous amount of power and were incredibly evil. I just wanted you gone at any costs. I couldn’t stand to think about any of your cells in my body.

Over time, I relaxed with you a little. I realised that a few cells here and there were okay and actually, I had to die of something at some point. I started thinking about death and realised that I had achieved a lot in my life and would be okay about dying if I had to go. I eventually started to realise how you brought the gift of valuing time and my life into sharp focus with your arrival.

Of course, I wanted to stay longer though.

In the end, I didn’t want to kill you at any cost. I just wanted peace and to have some happy times. Chemo is just so difficult and it’s a hard equation to way up; living longer or living well.

There are quite a few questions that I would still like to ask you but the most important are: why did you choose me? Was there a purpose behind you being in my body? Do you think you will come back?

I suspect you would say something like that my genetic and environmental conditions were right for a visit. That my body was under a bit of pressure and it was easy for the cells to divide.

I hope there was some point to your visit. It turned me upside down and inside out. I hope I never see you again but I still feel some fondness for you in teaching me to value my life more.

Please don’t come back though.

Yours, Andrea