More people died from cancer in 2020 than COVID-19. After all, cancer is the second leading cause of death after heart disease in the United States. We should have a well-funded public health system-and an informative media culture-that methodically instructs us on the symptoms for different types of cancers in the way we are being instructed now on the symptoms for COVID-19. Americans are systematically made ignorant about cancer through systemic neglect. What takes courage is to be vulnerable, to bare our scars to the world.” My only risk factor for colon cancer was being African American. I was not over 50, I had no history of polyps or colorectal cancer, had no inflammatory intestinal conditions, no family history of colon cancer, did not eat a low-fiber, high-fat diet, was not sedentary, did not have diabetes, was not obese, did not smoke, did not drink heavily, had not had radiation therapy.
After all, it wasn’t as though I had the typical risk factors for colon cancer. Over time, though, I reflected on the absurdity of blaming myself. I would hide them from the world, but I would never be able to hide them from myself, these permanent reminders of my folly. They would be my own personal scarlet letters. I wanted the surgical scars to function as humiliating symbols of my punishment. If it all sounds hyperbolic, then it’s because my self-loathing was hyperbolic. I also wanted the scars from the surgery-unmistakable, ugly, unchangeable-all over my chest. Not just because the procedure could rid my body of the remaining cancer. It was time for me to suffer for allowing my body to suffer.Īnd then, after six months of effective chemotherapy, I looked forward to surgery. I had deluded myself when the warning sirens were wailing. I realize now that I was also seeking punishment. Fighting cancer, it seemed, would be like fighting racism the healing would require pain.īut there was more to my cancer battle. I combat the societal adversity that is racism-and personal adversity of being framed as the problem for fighting racism. And with my inclination to push through adversity for a greater good.
I think my insistence on enduring the increasing pain had something to do with what I perceived as manly strength. I wanted, if anything, more chemo, more pain. But I refused to let my oncologist reduce the dosage. And all the neuropathy in the dead of winter: the pain of breathing in cold air, swallowing cold liquids, or touching anything cold. As I proceeded through the cycles of chemo, the side effects compounded: the fatigue, the nausea, the toxicity on my tongue, the darkening and drying and blistering of the palms of my hands and soles of my feet. I was fighting for my life, but I did not share that fact publicly, and I didn’t so much as whimper to my caretakers. But looking back now, I suspect this might be why I kept the ordeal to myself. When I started chemotherapy, at the end of January in 2018, I wasn’t yet conscious of all this self-loathing.
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