THIS is dedicated to family, friends and fellow cancer patients. It is a story of my struggle, perseverance and experiences, living through and with cancer. In 1995 I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and subsequently underwent a major prostatectomy. The shock of learning that one has cancer is overwhelming. It leaves one feeling profoundly angry, combative and powerless, all at the same time. I tried to express my shock, outrage and battle readiness at the time in a poem. Reading it today, I sense in it a tremendous overflow of emotion and trepidation: “You have not been invited in my body, I will fight you with all my strength.” I remember the painful complications from the operations and the immense fear of the cancer returning. It did. The many ups and downs, the many operations and surprises, and the battle against the cancer has still not ended. I used to joke that the cancer and I had both signed a legal document stating that if I die, we will both perish, so we should recognize our shared interest in allowing this body to survive until the day we must both surrender to Allah. As every other person who is faced with a life-threatening disease, I learned a great deal about myself, about others, and about the important things in life. But over the years I also learned some other things that I did not expect. Most of all I understood that cancer is a part of my body, a part of how it works. It is not a disease that one contracts, but is written in our genetic material and mysteriously inherited and brought forth by the circumstances of our life. The cancer's purpose is to survive and multiply. That is our only discernible function as humans too, but there are many other things that define us: love, emotions, tears, joy, excitement, learning, and dedication to enjoying life and helping others. All give us a purpose that we cannot ascribe to the cancer cells. The function of cancer cells is only to survive. I learned that the cancer and I shared an interest in allowing the body that carries us to survive. I thought this was an element of sensible compromise. But the cancer has not been very friendly with me, nor with many other people in whose lives it has interfered or which it has cut short. Nevertheless, we must deal with it as a fact of life and a part of how our body works. There is a part for medication and operations, but I believe that as great a part lies in self-recognition of who we are, how the cancer relates to us, and the great respect we have for life. As Winston Churchill once shrewdly noted: “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” I will admit that it has not been easy. With the return of my cancer ten years after it was first diagnosed, I had the medical team work on how to combat the reinvigoration of the cancer cells in my body. Every three months I have to check my PSA and see the level of its activity and growth. It has of course reached the point of metastasization and our common future has become rather unpredictable. The cocktail of hormones, injections and radiation have become so omnipresent that we question the quality of the life we must endure. A year ago I decided to take a vacation from all medication, and it did reenergize me at the time, it allowed me to strengthen my belief in myself, and it gave me much-needed respite from the constant fear of seeing the cancer progress. But as the oncologists had told me, all options were worth trying, but without medication the cancer would most likely progress. And they were right. But that is not the end of the story. At the end of it all, one must accept the conflicting interests and forces in one's own body, much like electricity requires a positive and a negative charge to flow. We live in between the two extremes and we try to urge our body not to do anything too extreme that will harm us. The cancer cell tells us: “We live together, but don't push me to the end.” And let us not forget that, as cancer survivor Marian Bryant eloquently wrote about cancer: “It cannot cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot eat away peace. It cannot destroy confidence. It cannot kill friendship. It cannot quench the Spirit.” After years of living with cancer we hope that accepting, even loving, one's disease might somehow calm its ferocity. As we accept it as a part of our body, we also learn that medicine can only slow it, it cannot remove it. That is why it is all the more important that we deal with it mentally and develop a relationship with it of mutual regard, and then living with cancer is not as bad as we think. Perhaps it is most of all about making peace with ourselves, with the cancer as a part of who we are. Ultimately of course we die, like every human being, but during the time we are here we must learn to live with each other, with those around us and with what we are within. It is not easy, but it is doable and meaningful. I am reminded of the instructive words of Abraham Lincoln, who once said: “It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
The poem I wrote almost 20 years ago, when I met my cancer for the first time, concluded thus: “I rise in glory of my human frailty, Savor the victory of my body and soul.” — Hassan Youssef Yassin is a Saudi media analyst based in Jeddah
