"... can you ever feel safe? I thought about the large mass in my breast and pictured the cells marching like fire ants on a raging tour of my interior. Five days later, while I was driving, the surgeon called to tell me I did not have cancer. I had a fibroid-like mass with a jagged surface resembling cancer’s starburst shape. He had two radiologists confirm this. 'I am so very sorry,' he said. 'This was a lesson for me. Always wait for the test results.' That moment at the wheel is still perfectly preserved in my mind, the flood of relief, the blinding joy. I will die someday of something, but it probably won’t be from this. The lesson for me was that Danny was a partner for the long haul, however long or short this life might be."
Writes Beth Apone Salamon in
"We Had to Break Up. He Refused. 'I love you,' I told him, 'but this is over'" (NYT).
This is a "Modern Love" column. The headline refers to the part, when she thinks she has cancer and tells her husband, whose first wife died, slowly, of breast cancer, that they have to break up because he doesn't deserve to go through the same thing twice. That's interesting. An offer he can't not refuse.
But I was more interested in the ideation about cancer. Those metaphors: a cell gone "haywire" and "fire ants on a raging tour."
संदेश
19 टिप्पणियां:
A nice offer. But no husband is going to say "Ok thanks. I'm outta here. Good luck with that cancer."
Fire ants hurt. Cancer really doesn't until the end. A vivid metaphor but no an entirely accurate one.
"Wimminsk!" - Popeye
They simply don't understand how men think.
Or she's just another woke drama queen, signaling her virtuous progressive-woke self by "liberating" her husband, but really just formulating another topical topic to get herself selected for the featured post on this week's NYT Modern Love column.
Ants on a Log…
An offer he can't not refuse
C’mon Ann! It’s too early for this horseshit. As a former physicist, I can internalize negating a negative, but in the effort to understand your words, I got lost in the maze and bumped into things. Give a guy on the west coast a break, huh?
- Krumhorn
Why did the surgeon say he was very sorry? "I'm very sorry that you don't have cancer." What?
Uh oh
Did I repair it? ….talking about bumping into things
The "fire ants" isn't too far off. Cancer is a parasitic lump of cells. Like ants, you want to keep them off your property, and if they do enter your property; you want to kill them where they are.
I think it was the "ex" that said "I am so very sorry. This was a lesson for me. Always wait for the test results." in regards to the rush to break-up before the results.
The NYT once again excels at showing introspection without fear of insight.
The metaphor of a cell gone haywire is so accurate it isn't even a metaphor. This is exactly what happens in cancer. One cell goes haywire on the level of its genome, and suddenly it is growing out of control, reproducing like mad to create a tumor and eventually in some cases metastases. Sometimes, very rarely, it goes so haywire that it metastasizes, sending its progeny into the lymph and blood stream to cause tumors in other parts of the body without ever leaving a trace in its site of origin. This is called metastatic cancer of unknown primary origin. Very rare, but it happens.
"Fire ants hurt. Cancer really doesn't until the end."
Fire ants don't always bite until a BUNCH have gained access to your flesh.
Ask me how I know.
I've had cancer twice, but never considered using it as a way to dump a lover. The ultimate version of "It's not you, it's me."
I say it's a software error, not a hardware error.
I wonder how often the cells that go haywire get taken out by your immune system before they and their progeny build villages in the frontier?
In 1991, I was selected for a jury in which a woman was suing her former doctor for a false positive breast cancer diagnosis. I'd just had a melanoma removed, biopsied, and sliced off again to be sure it was all gone. Another doctor told me there was still a 5% chance it would come back, so I talked myself off that jury.
"Large or small cancer was still cancer.”
I think we all can come together and agree that this is a true statement.
Luckily her husband wasn't Newt Gingrich.
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