I finally purchased John Diamond's book 'C: Because cowards get cancer too'...
Since yesterday I've read 3/4 of the book, it is extremely interesting due to its honest factual account by John Diamond himself of the cynical illness named Cancer. His language is inspiring and scientific from the opening sad sentence to the hope throughout the book, whilst suffering with the diagnosis of Cancer in the throat. He explained it as not being 'brave' as his definition of brave is that of risking your own life for others, using the example of if he took an illness from someone else to stop their pain and suffering (instead making himself suffer - putting his life at risk). Therefore, he thought himself as less brave as he had no choice - he was given and living with Cancer, not being able to stop it. He had to live with it.
He speaks cleverly about Cancer with his articulate language, he explains how illnesses and defects in health occur easily, 'consider, by the time you hit 40, your tattered heart has already thumped out a billion and a half beats: what can the chances be of any organ doing anything a billion and a half times and never making a mistake? Your 30 trillion or so cells have each replicated themselves a few thousand times: how could it possibly not be that a few of these cells would not band together in that state of cytological anarchy which leads to cancer and death? Consider anything the body does over and over, asleep and awake, consider the peril it writes every time it gets into a car, breathes a lung full - 150 million times a year, not counting the hours of panicky hyperventilation - of sour and sickly city air, eating something that's fatty or not fatty enough, and you are considering impending death', I find this extract from the book a rather intellectual perspective of life, the risks and how they equate somehow to impending death. His opinion of the cancerous cell to me, is a clever accuracy of its aims and cynical ways, 'this tedious life and death destiny isn't enough for the cancerous cell. The cancerous cell wants to go places, do things that its parents never had the chance to do. A cancer cell is the one that never grows up. The metaphor isn't a casual one: The cancer cell bears all the nastier traits of reckless youth', John explains the cancerous cell as doing things 'its parents never had the chance to do', being the previous cells that the cancerous cell was produced from, this shows John explaining the cancer cells as stubborn and selfish, taking over bodies to almost 'gain power' and in some sense, self accomplishment. Developing from this he explains 'the cancer cell goes where it likes and above all believes itself to be immortal' showing the difficulty of irradiating the cancer cells from the body.
The sad thing is the cynical cancer destroys lives rather selfishly. His and Nigella's daughter was 3 and their son only 10 months old during John's diagnosis. He has references to his wife Nigella kindly and innocently beautiful, whilst Nigella was on a put-u-up bed he explains her lying there next to him: 'Nigella looking beautiful and breathing gently in the put-u-up on the other side of the small room. If God wasn't exactly in his heaven, then He had surely popped out for only a short while', this brought a tear to my eye how John passionately explains his wife. Before his tracheotomy he was allowed home with Nigella, he explains 'we drove home and lay together in our bed for what was to be the last time as the couple we had been for eight years. Tomorrow I would become somebody else' by John saying his transformation into somebody else he meant how himself physically, emotionally and vocally would be totally differentiated from his current state - his current self.
After his treatment he went through phases of anger at his Cancer, taking it out on Nigella and their children, but then 10 minutes later being apologetic. He had restless nights, where he would keep awakening with pains and once he started thumping on the walls due to his pain and prolonging anger and in some sense, suicidal persona - Cancer had turned him. To prevent him from a suicidal outcome, he wrote that Nigella and their children kept him alive, explaining 'Nigella whom I love beyond measure and who kept me alive as much as did any medicine' it shows the strength of their mutual love for each other. The extract explaining how he felt he wanted a sense of release, being death to erase all pain and suffering. It made me wonder if death would be in a sense, the 'best way out' due to a fast process and quick sedation to all pain. I think people automatically associate Cancer with the end and 'cure' being death, therefore causing sufferers to want to be predeceased before the Cancer selfishly takes over and kills them for good. The real question is do those 'life saving' treatments work as well as they should? As radiotherapy is potentially more damaging to Cancer in some aspects, but yet, still continues.There is always slight 'hope' but that hope is perhaps not enough for the constant anxiety and restless nights, whilst sleeping with cancerous cells multiplying inside your body, without any sympathy or justice. I couldn't live with Cancer, as by reading John's account of his treatment and suffering I feel as thought I can sympathise with him and feel some of his pain. I respect his bravery, but also patience with Cancer, as it holds out until it decides it's bored of squirming inside a body, and when the cancerous cells are no longer immortal.
Reading this account of John Diamond and his experiences living with Cancer, it makes me realise how lucky I am to not live in pain and suffering - with constant treatment which in some sense has no chance of erasing Cancer forever. As to me, if someone is a survival of Cancer, I believe, maybe harshly to some, that this Cancer will live with them forever. It never lets go, once it catches its 'victims'...
<3 xxxx
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