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Someone once said that choosing chemotherapy is like choosing to jump off a building when someone is holding a gun to your head. You jump out of fear of death, or at least a fear of the painful and ugly version of death that is cancer, or you jump from a desire to live, even if that life will be for the rest of its duration a painful one.
There is a choice, of course, and you make it, but the choice never really feels like yours. You comply out of a fear of disappointing others, a fear of being seen as deserving of your suffering, a hope that you could again feel healthy, a fear that you will be blamed for your own dying, a hope that you can put it all behind you, a fear of being named as the person who cannot cheerfully submit to every form of self-preservative self-destruction written in the popular instructions. You comply from ritual obedience, as when the teacher hands out exams, or the bailiff says "All rise," or the minister entreats a prayer, or the cops shout "Move along." You comply from hope that obedience now will result in years in which you can disobey later. You comply because the only other option might be to drink carrot juice and die of your own cellular proliferation refusing to admit your own mortal vulnerabilities, pinning heartbreaking notes about spontaneous remission around your room.
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