Cancer - A disease or a part of us?
"That doesn't kill us makes us stronger"
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Today is 4th Feb, The World Cancer Day! , led by the Union for International Cancer Control to support the goals of the World Cancer Declaration written in 2008, to raise awareness of Cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment.
What is Cancer?
We all know it to be a deadly disease. But is it really a disease? As for us disease is usually due to some infection or external factors that affect our body. So what external factor causes Cancer? Well, the answer is "Nothing".
About 8 years ago, I started reading/researching about Cancer. The reason, we suspected, was that my mother was suffering from a kind of Cancer, and later on was diagnosed with leukemia. This inspired me to know more and more about this disease, and in all the books and medical journals I read on this subject, I came across the book "The Emperor of All Maladies - A Biography of Cancer" by Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee. Although, while reading this book, I could read only one page, and had a list of medical jargon that I couldn't understand. It took me two days to complete one page of this book. But by the time I read 25% of the book, I was in a place where I could discuss things with my mom's oncologist! And man, she was impressed :P
As per the research, the first cancer patient dates back to the era of Pharaohs in Egypt, as one of the mummies extracted from pyramids was found to be suffering from Cancer. While some claim that cancer dates almost 1.5 million years back. While some other scientists have claimed that it is even older than that. Cancer is as old as humans.
The Greek Physician Hippocrates (also known as the father of medicine) (ca. 460 BCE - 370 BCE), claimed that the human body is made up of four humors - blood, the yellow bile, the black bile, and phlegm. The same philosophy was supported by Gelan, the father of pharmacy later on. For a very long period of time, their work was studied by a lot of scientists, but each one of them was not clear on what exactly this black bile was. As no one could even find it specifically in the body, that is where it comes from, but the way Cancer behaves in the body mimics the behavior of this Black bile! With this theory, each and every human being on this planet has Cancer! So it no longer remains to be a disease that you get infected with or what.
We all have Cancer cells in our bodies, it is the way we live, our lifestyle, the kind of things we are exposed to, and the kind of things we consume (not just food), that sometimes gives a favorable environment to these cancer cells to grow rapidly and more than the regular cell, and the person is eventually diagnosed with Cancer. Interestingly, when I was going through my mother's diagnosis, her reports claimed that it can diagnose cancer in the body, even if there is one Cancer cell per 1000000 healthy cells! Phew!!
Well, this post was not intended to show off the research I did on Cancer, but more on the other side of it. How it can make or break not just a human(patient) but also the family. When my mom was diagnosed, we three, my dad, brother, and myself, sat together, and figured out, how are we going to deal with this kind of calamity. We mutually agreed, that whatever happens, we are not going to let this Cancer take over our family in any case. We agreed that we would no longer treat our mom as a patient, but as a normal person, who has been diagnosed with a disease as common as Diabetes, where patients are required to follow a routine with medicines. As her oncologist also mentioned, if she follows a proper diet and routine, takes her medicines and more importantly approaches Cancer with positivity, she will be able to do well. And that was almost 8 years ago now. She is a healthy, happy, enthusiastic, and energetic person, and today, we sometimes need to remind her, that slow down, you still are a Cancer patient!
So the bottom line remained, positivity!
Hence on this World Cancer Day, I would like to share a very simple thought, that remains close to my heart, No matter what kind of Cancer hits, irrespective of whether science has a cure for it or not, we have a very strong mechanism to deal with it, and that is laughter, love, positivity and family! Just remember, Cancer feeds on negativity (in any form) and weakens in front of positivity! Be it in your food, your thoughts, the things you consume!