anger

 

 

I am angry.

 

 

Cancer always starts begin. Maybe you feel more tired than usual, or have a weird ache, but you never think it’s very serious. You get it checked out, mostly because your insurance will pay for it and your mother urges you to take better care of yourself. Too bad it’s not benign. The doctors always find some abnormality, but never can diagnose it. It takes a battery of tests to discover that you’re a ticking time bomb of renegade cells waiting to conquer your body. You don’t know that though. At first you think your just tired.

 

 

I am angry.

 

 

In order to save your life you have to kill your body. They have to destroy the host environment so the cancer cells will leave. The only difference between the cure and the disease is the cure will stop before it kills you, but only by a small fraction.

 

 

I am angry.

 

 

One of every four people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer. That’s 25% of our population. We still don’t have a cure, but we somehow can afford to spend billions on bombs.

 

 

I am so angry.

 

 

I am angry for the women who lost their breasts to cancer and their womb to the cure. I am angry for the grandmother who still couldn’t stop smoking even as the disease ate away her lungs. I am angry for my  twenty-three year friend who is desperately trying to save her cervix because she wants to have children someday. I am angry for my mother who thinks that every birthday and holiday is her last before the cancer comes back to take her away. And I am angry for myself, for my tears, for being afraid that these people are going to be taken, for worrying that the next phone call I get is going to be another friend fallen to the disease.

 

 

I am angry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katherine Binns