Cancer

TALKING POINTS MEMO takes a moment to ponder cancer and our inability to affect its occurrences.

It's been a sobering several days, with Snow's cancer recurrence and that of Elizabeth Edwards. It's a reminder that with all our technology, the best medical care available, which I'm sure both of these two have, we're still vulnerable to being stricken in the prime of our lives by organic processes emerging from within our own bodies that we cannot control.

—Joshua Micah Marshall, Talking Points Memo

But I wonder. I wonder about this way of thinking so common to our mainstream American dialogue. Perhaps we cannot control the mutant cells that go haywire and won't shut off their replication. But maybe "all our technology"—this agent that is positioned above to "control" these mutant cells—has more to do with nurturing the occurrences than we commonly acknowledge. Perhaps "controlling" these cancers should not come in the form of our typical "Whack-a-mole" responses to life's challenges (after the fact and chasing symptomology), but to a less Western approach—one of realigning with the natural order, heeding its hardly-subtle messages, and trying less to "control" it or arrange it to our own liking.

That is, perhaps what we look to for a cure—"all our technology"—is instead the very cause of our cancers.

Cancer...it is something that is happening all the time in our bodies, yet most of the time our bodies fight it off with ease. Cancer is nothing more than a cell, part of ourselves, that starts growing uncontrollably. That’s all. And yet it can kill.

With Elizabeth Edwards relapsing after recovering from cancer, I thought it a good idea to give a brief lesson on cancer. This is a topic I am very familiar with. A big chunk of my professional career has involved studying subjects that are related to cancer. I have also seen someone die of cancer. I know what happens in cancer on the level of molecules, cells…and to a whole person and that person’s family.

Cancer is what happens when a cell escapes from the normal controls that limit its ability to divide. Cell division is how we develop from a single cell—a fertilized egg—into a human being. Cell division is how our hair grows, and how our intestinal lining and blood cells constantly replenish themselves. It is also how injuries heal. Cell division is a very tightly regulated process. It isn’t easy for a cell to divide. Our cells are constantly exchanging messages about what’s going on in our bodies, and most of those messages prevent cell division.

Cells require survival signals from other cells. Without these, a cell will simply commit suicide. They don’t just die. They actually chew up their own DNA, package up their insides into parcels that immune cells can dispose of, and kill themselves. Every cell in our body has to receive these survival signals or they kill themselves. That is one level of control.

Liveblogging NBC News:

She may have a fracture on the left side and may have something suspicious on her right side. Wednesday they went to the hospital. The cancer has returned and it is malignant.

She has had a battery of results. Her cancer is bad. It is confined in bone --he is saying it is a good thing.

When it goes into the bone it is no longer curable, it is only treatable. The tumor is small and that is why they are optimistic. John is saying that many patients go on to live for a long time. It is similar to what diabetes patients have to live with.

Elizabeth says the needed to talk to their family and the kids, The kids thought that it was cool for her to loose her hair the first time and are disappointed she may not go bald again.

She is saying that every cancer survivor goes through this. They know the ache on a side, that any symptom might be putting you into alarm mode. This is something that every survivor has to live with for the rest for their life. She doesn't forsee changing anything.

She is asymptomatic. Cracking the rib was a 'fluke'. Had she not cracked the rib, she would not have had the opportunity to catch the cancer.

The campaign goes on. "We are not choosing not to cower in a corner".

They are going forward. They are coming tonight to New York City to the DL21C event.

"I am immensly proud of this campaign ... Is this a hardship for us? ... There is nobody offering a more positive and delineated vision of where we can go on as a county. "