Perspectives About Cancer

                Cancer is one of the many diseases that cause many deaths. The bad part is that it is very difficult to cure and many are still researching on how to completely defeat cancer. It is said that all of us have cancer cells in our body and if it is triggered by carcinogens, which is everywhere in today’s society, it will grow as the unwanted cells in our body that keeps growing until it forms tumors and complications.

                The documentary ‘The Rhetoric  of Cancer ’ was made by a cancer patient aiming to know and gather information on what to address cancer because he himself had a hard time on figuring out how to treat his cancer. He approached different persons involved in cancer like doctors, researchers, patients, and priests.

                On others, they treat cancer as an enemy to be defeated. It is like they have a civil war on their own body. They don’t want cancer to exist in their life. For the research companies, they want to find a way to defeat cancer and discovering the cure for it. For some patients, it is a fight with one’s self. They need to have strong emotional commitment as to not let cancer rule their life.

                In another point of view, since there is no cure for it yet, living and dying with it is a struggle. But others just accept to live alongside it. It is part of the body and uses the same bloodstream. There are parts of the body that they like the most and others not much. Just learn to love the body and take good care of it as it is part of their life.

                For those who study it, they use metaphors to simplify their fight with cancer as they study what protein to take down that causes cancer from the rest of thousands of other proteins that do normal vital processes. The cell is not something like a bad one or a good one. It is like a system that does different processes. He thought of it as a symphony of different tunes and when one goes out of tune, that is the cancer cell but the musician should find a way to restore it to the way it used to be.

                Cancer can be inspiring in its own way. It teaches people how to value their life more and to not take it for granted. It may be a natural part of life that has its purpose on being there even though it gave so much pain and struggles to many people. Maybe its not that bad of a thing but a natural part of the journey of life and how the world goes. We could at least help the cancer patients and make them feel that no matter the difficulty in life, they are not alone.

Rasty Rastrullo

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