from "a heartbreaking work of staggering genuis"
this is the best description of cancer i have ever read:
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They took my mother's stomach out about 6 months ago. They had hoped they removed the offending portion. But of course they didn't get it all. They had left some of it and it had grown, it had come back, it had laid eggs, was stowed away, was stuck to the side of the spaceship. When she went in again and they had "opened her up" -a phrase they used- and had looked inside, it was staring out at them, at the doctors, like a thousand writhing worms under a rock, swarming, shimmering, wet and oily -Good God!- or maybe not like worms but like a million little podules, each a tiny city of cancer, each with an unruly, sprawling, environmentally careless citizenry with no zoning laws whatsoever. When the doctor opened her up, and there was suddenly a light thrown upon the world of cancer-podules, they were annoyed by the disturbance, and defiant. Turn Off. The fucking. Light. They glared at the doctor, each podule, though a city unto itself, having one single eye, one blind evil eye in the middle, which stared imperiously, as only a blind eye can do, out at the doctor. Go. The. Fuck. Away. The doctors did what they could, took the whole stomach out, connected what was left, this part to that, and sewed her back up, leaving the city as is, the colonist to their manifest destiny, their fossil fuels, their strip malls and suburban sprawl.
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i'm only 54 pages into the book...i keep falling asleep in the library, but it's good. even when i try to read non-medical stuff, medicine always seems to creep in. and that's because sickness and death are some of the most awful and important and expressive moments in people's lives.
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They took my mother's stomach out about 6 months ago. They had hoped they removed the offending portion. But of course they didn't get it all. They had left some of it and it had grown, it had come back, it had laid eggs, was stowed away, was stuck to the side of the spaceship. When she went in again and they had "opened her up" -a phrase they used- and had looked inside, it was staring out at them, at the doctors, like a thousand writhing worms under a rock, swarming, shimmering, wet and oily -Good God!- or maybe not like worms but like a million little podules, each a tiny city of cancer, each with an unruly, sprawling, environmentally careless citizenry with no zoning laws whatsoever. When the doctor opened her up, and there was suddenly a light thrown upon the world of cancer-podules, they were annoyed by the disturbance, and defiant. Turn Off. The fucking. Light. They glared at the doctor, each podule, though a city unto itself, having one single eye, one blind evil eye in the middle, which stared imperiously, as only a blind eye can do, out at the doctor. Go. The. Fuck. Away. The doctors did what they could, took the whole stomach out, connected what was left, this part to that, and sewed her back up, leaving the city as is, the colonist to their manifest destiny, their fossil fuels, their strip malls and suburban sprawl.
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i'm only 54 pages into the book...i keep falling asleep in the library, but it's good. even when i try to read non-medical stuff, medicine always seems to creep in. and that's because sickness and death are some of the most awful and important and expressive moments in people's lives.
posted by heyrod at 12:55 PM
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