The 'C' Word

First off apologies for this article in that there is unlikely to be any real direction with it. This is merely an opportunity for me to get some feelings out. I have just taken a thirty minute walk around London’s streets trying to put my thoughts into some sort of order, but all I have lingering around in my skull is one word. The ‘C’ word. No, not the ‘C’ word that would get you a slap in your mouth from your mother if you ever were stupid enough to mutter it in her presence, but the ‘C’ word that brings about only thoughts of death, and somber ceremonies. That word is ‘Cancer’. What a horrible, dirty word. I even feel slightly embarrassed typing it into the computer.

What brings about this sudden thought is something that threw me shortly before my Friday lunch. A time I usually spend relaxing, reading a good book in one of London’s many parks. While searching to find out if, let us say, an old friend had finished a book I knew they were writing, typing their name into Google brought a completely different article to what I was looking for. This person I last saw, perhaps, a year ago and greeted me with a cheery and firm handshake even when there could easily have been a slight animosity between us. This person was, perhaps not fit, but certainly healthy the last time we met. And this article sitting in front of me informs me that this man has that horrible disease that only brings about thoughts of death. The article itself is actually expertly written by the man who is suffering with the- I’m not entirely sure what the best term for it is- illness and successfully makes some light of such awful news.

While trying to clear my head on the walk I came across a number of- while depleting still high amount- people sitting with that little white stick in their mouth. On a few occasions I wanted to march up to the foolish fellow, rip it out from between their lips and stamp it into the pavement. But then I realised something. While ‘experts’ inform us that the more we smoke and drink alcohol the higher our chances of catching the illness- I actually cannot bring myself to type the word again- it really does appear to be a very random disease. The friend who wrote the article admits to smoking just one cigarette in his life while I know people who smoke twenty a day that are still living comfortably into their sixties. Or the three year old child diagnosed with Leukemia who, you hope, has never been near a cigarette in their short life, yet the old man who admits to drinking Scotch like it was water and endlessly filling his lungs with tobacco lives for over a century.

Why is this dreadful disease so seemingly random? Is it because God wants to test us and show us hard times so that we appreciate the many good times in life? Is it because God is, in fact, a horrible, evil b@stard who is not the benevolent being many see him to be? Or is there really no God and it really is just a random calculation? Many will have their opinions but no-one will ever know for sure. What is certain is that the quicker scientists can find a way of ending the disease the better.