Cancer Can Be Beaten Quotes

Reflecting on his physical therapy reminds me that I’m not a fan of the “fighting” metaphor for cancer. I don’t think you fight it, or beat it. The effort I saw Henry expend, again and again, at the age of one, under such duress, suggests someone who could beat anything that can be beaten. Cancer’s pretty much going to do what it wants. Should it come for me, I hope I’ll just ride the wave.

ALS is, in my opinion, the cruelest disease. At least with cancer, there’s a glimmer of hope. You can come up with a game plan and you can fight. ALS is terminal. In all cases. Nobody has ever beaten ALS. I don’t say this to be callous or melodramatic; indeed, I saw its effects up close. Worst of all, it affects only the body, so as people become progressively and inevitably more paralyzed, they are keenly aware of everything that is happening to them. Think about that: You are 100 percent aware of your own paralysis. The

And that evening too, as I looked at her arm, into which was flowing a life that was no longer anything but sickness and torment, I asked myself why? At the nursing home I did not have time to go into it... But when I reached home, all the sadness and horror of these last days dropped upon me with all its weight. And I too had a cancer eating into me—remorse. “Don’t let them operate on her.” And I had not prevented anything. Often, hearing of sick people undergoing a long martyrdom, I had felt indignant at the apathy of their relatives. “For my part, I should kill him.” At the first trial I had given in: beaten by the ethics of society, I had abjured my own. “No,” Sartre said to me. “You were beaten by technique: and that was fatal.” Indeed it was. One is caught up in the wheels and dragged along, powerless in the face of specialists’ diagnoses, their forecasts, their decisions. The patient becomes their property: get him away from them if you can! There were only two things to choose between on that Wednesday—operating or euthanasia. Maman, vigorously resuscitated, and having a strong heart, would have stood out against intestinal stoppage for a long while and she would have lived through hell, for the doctors would have refused euthanasia… A race had begun between death and torture. I asked myself how one manages to go on living when someone you love has called out to you “Have pity on me” in vain.

There are days, nevertheless, when the sun is out and I get off the beaten path and think about her hungrily. Now and then, despite my grim satisfaction, I get to thinking about another way of life, get to wondering if it would make a difference having a young, restless creature by my side. The trouble is I can hardly remember what she looks like nor even how it feels to have my arms around her. Everything that belongs to the past seems to have fallen into the sea; I have memories, but the images have lost their vividness, they seem dead and desultory, like timebitten mummies stuck in a quagmire. If I try to recall my life in New York I get a few splintered fragments, nightmarish and covered with verdigris. It seems as if my own proper existence had come to an end somewhere, just where exactly I can’t make out. I’m not an American any more, nor a New Yorker, and even less a European, or a Parisian. I haven’t any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I’m neither for nor against. I’m a neutral.

If we think of Kay and those kids along merely natural, Charlie, we're beaten. But don't have to think along those lines! God is God. He's asking us to believe as we never believed before. And the fist thing we've got to believe with all our being is that He knows what He is doing. You don't want this cancer. Neither do I. But obviously God wants us both to have it. So why not rejoice? We're always saying: 'Thy Will be done.' Let's do it. As for Kay and the kids, let's realize something we may never have fully realized before. They are His kids much more than they are yours. He is their Father much more completely than you could ever be. You and Kay brought them to birth. But who gave them being? God, of course. We don't believe enough in Divine Providence, Chic. That's why we got panicky. Don't you see that since God is the Father of you kids, He is obligated to care for them? Yes, I said obligated!! We pray the Our Father often enough, but we live the Our Father all too seldom. You're going to learn your Faith as you never learned it before - and you're going to live it as you never lived it before. God will take care of those kids. He has plans for their futures more complete than anything you could dream. What's more, He can make His plans come true. We don't trust God enough, Chic - and I believe it hurts Him. Show yourself to Him as you love your kids to show themselves to you. Your immediate concern is not the kids - or even Kay. Your immediate concern is to ready yourself for the most glorious moment of your existence: the moment of your meeting God face to face!