tropic of cancer

Yesterday I received an e-mail from one of my best friends letting me know that one of her closest friends has a quite serious form of cancer. This news came just months after she lost another of her closest friends to a nasty, aggressive cancer, leaving behind three school-aged children. It feels completely unfair and ridiculous.

I began to think about the nature of cancer, its treatment, its prevalence, its indiscriminate attack on the body. I assume it starts as one bad cell. One cell that is irregular grows quickly and begins to encroach on the healthy part of the body. Why is it that if the body is invaded by a virus, it attacks, isolates and destroys that virus yet it can't seek and destroy a cell that is not one of its own? Perhaps the body wasn't designed with this defense because whatever is causing all the cancer wasn't around when the plans for the body were laid down. It sort of goes with my theory about flying. We can't survive a 30,000 foot fall because we aren't meant to be that high off the ground.

I've seen people overcome cancer--my mom rebounded from a very advance stage of lymphoma. Several friends have fought and whipped breast cancer. A friend of mine is currently responding very well to an aggressive chemo cocktail to treat her very serious and difficult back cancer. Funny that we use the word "treat" for pumping the body with a bunch of nasty chemicals that nearly kill it. It doesn't sound like much of a treat. And I've also lost people to cancer. My grandpa left the world far too early because of cancer. A college friend died of cancer a few years ago of a tumor that showed up in her thigh one day.

This complicated disease is still best prevented through simple means. Eat well. Get exercise. No fancy pills or ritual, just eat more dark foods like blueberries and spinach for their antioxidents, drink lots of water, and get your butt outside each day. Walk, run, skip, crawl, roll...do whatever you can do to move your limbs. And to fight cancer around you? Take care of the environment. Make sure that your batteries and fluorocarbon lightbulbs get thrown away properly. Support cancer walks and runs. Give a dollar if that is all you have. You are giving the gift of a cure to people who haven't even been born yet. How wonderful is that? And, on a more personal level, if you are the type to do so, say a prayer for John. He would be grateful and so would I.