It Was Disney World Fused With Cancerland.

In 2005, A Man Diagnosed With Multiple Myeloma Asked Me If He Would Be Alive To Watch His Daughter Graduate From High School In A Few Months. In 2009, Bound To A Wheelchair, He Watched His Daughter Graduate From College. The Wheelchair Had Nothing To Do With His Cancer. The Man Had Fallen Down While Coaching His Youngest Son's Baseball Team.

Cancer's Life Is A Recapitulation Of The Body's Life, Its Existence A Pathological Mirror Of Our Own. Susan Sontag Warned Against Overburdening An Illness With Metaphors. But This Is Not A Metaphor. Down To Their Innate Molecular Core, Cancer Cells Are Hyperactive, Survival-endowed, Scrappy, Fecund, Inventive Copies Of Ourselves.

Most Days, I Go Home And I Feel Rejuvenated. I Feel Ebullient.

I Began Wondering, Can One Really Write A Biography Of An Illness? But I Found Myself Thinking Of Cancer As This Character That Has Lived For 4,000 Years, And I Wanted To Know What Was Its Birth, What Is Its Mind, Its Personality, Its Psyche?

A Breast Cancer Might Turn Out To Have A Close Resemblance To A Gastric Cancer. And This Kind Of Reorganization Of Cancer In Terms Of Its Internal Genetic Anatomy Has Really Changed The Way We Treat And Approach Cancer In General.