Sorry, You Have Been Blocked

Cancer is often framed as a choice, but for many survivors, the reality is far more complicated. After facing a diagnosis twice, the author reflects on the weight of those words and the ongoing struggle to find peace.

The Cancer to Choose

In 2004, an internist found a suspicious nodule on the author’s thyroid. The diagnosis was early-stage papillary carcinoma, a form of cancer often described by doctors as the one to choose. “If I had to have cancer, this is the one I’d choose,” the surgeon told her, a comment that felt dismissive to the author at the time. The treatment involved surgery to remove the thyroid, radioactive iodine therapy, and a week of isolation. Despite the physical toll—menopausal symptoms, nausea, and isolation—the condition was 99% curable.

Seventeen years later, the author faced a second, more serious diagnosis. This time, the cancer was slow-growing and treatable, but it required the removal of the uterus. The experience was different from the first, marked by a deeper, more persistent fear. She describes the anxiety as a “terminal tinnitus” that never stops ticking in her ear.

Richard Nixon launched his “war on cancer” in 1971, aiming for a total national commitment. The author admits she paid little attention to the effort, shielded by the conceit of youth. It took the death of her grandfather to lung cancer a few years later to shatter that illusion. Now, she carries the knowledge that cancer is an “anonymous death threat,” written in a reckless, unrecognizable hand.

Rethinking the Language

After her second diagnosis, her sister suggested dropping the war metaphor. Instead, she was told to “love the cancer out of her body.” The author questions the practicality of this advice. Her own oncologist admitted that in medical school, she was taught to “hate the cancer more than she loved the patient.” This creates a confusing dialect where the measure of success seems to be the intensity of the hatred, rather than the quality of care or the patient’s well-being.

Susan Sontag, in her book Illness as Metaphor, argued that cancer has been “spectacularly encumbered” by metaphor. She warned against the stigma that illness reveals moral failure or weakness. The author wonders if this constant framing—of cancer as punishment or a battle—adds unnecessary pressure. It prompts the question: if a healthy lifestyle isn’t enough to prevent the disease, what is the actual cause? She points out that she has held her body in love since her college years, dancing and exercising, yet catastrophic cells still caused her to lose organs.

Despite the fear of a third recurrence, the author is trying to shift her perspective. She stops thinking of cancer as a battleground and looks inward. She acknowledges that this shift brings up layers of sorrow and loss that have been buried in her cells. It is a process that may take years to unfold, but she is determined to reclaim her time to live, to love, and to make herself whole again.