I read the book by this name recently. The story is about young (teenage) survivors of cancer who live constantly in fear of a relapse and with a reduced quality of life. The protagonist is a 16-year old girl and its about her life, love, friendship, obsession.
The book brings home the bitter truth of how many cancer sufferers there are in the world and how they are forced to "exist" because their loved ones do not want them to die. They become fertile grounds for experimental drugs and newfangled treatments in futile attempts to extend their lives. And these lives go unaccounted for, and unmourned. Being cancer patients is what their life was all about. No one remembers what they were really like; that they too are intelligent, passionate human beings capable of having a sense of humor.
If the patients are young people, then they have similar wants as a teenager - want to go on dates, fall in love, hang out with friends, dress up, travel etc. Not being able to enjoy all this is tragic; death is preferable. Instead they are forced to live a "meaningful" life in the short time they have, plan which clothes they will be buried in and worry about what their folks will write in their eulogies (which most people worry about only after sixty).
Some hard-hitting excerpts from the book that left a lasting impact-
1) She seemed to be mostly a professionally sick person, like me, which made me worry that when I died, they'd have nothing to say about me except that I fought heroically, as if the only thing I'd ever done was Have Cancer.
2) ...because I guess her brain cancer was of the variety that makes you not you before it makes you not alive.
3) People talk about the courage of cancer patients, and I do not deny that courage. I had been poked and stabbed and poisoned for years, and still I trod on. But make no mistake, in that moment, I would have been very, very happy to die.
4) Never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves" Easy enough to say when you are a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of faults to be found in our stars.
5) Sleeping with the BiPAP all night made my lungs feel almost normal, although, then again, I did not really remember lung normality.
6) You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.
7) That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.
8) ...would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people? Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we are disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare, and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote the Fifty-fifth sonnet about.
9) The real heroes anyway aren't the people DOING things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
10) You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
The book brings home the bitter truth of how many cancer sufferers there are in the world and how they are forced to "exist" because their loved ones do not want them to die. They become fertile grounds for experimental drugs and newfangled treatments in futile attempts to extend their lives. And these lives go unaccounted for, and unmourned. Being cancer patients is what their life was all about. No one remembers what they were really like; that they too are intelligent, passionate human beings capable of having a sense of humor.
If the patients are young people, then they have similar wants as a teenager - want to go on dates, fall in love, hang out with friends, dress up, travel etc. Not being able to enjoy all this is tragic; death is preferable. Instead they are forced to live a "meaningful" life in the short time they have, plan which clothes they will be buried in and worry about what their folks will write in their eulogies (which most people worry about only after sixty).
Some hard-hitting excerpts from the book that left a lasting impact-
1) She seemed to be mostly a professionally sick person, like me, which made me worry that when I died, they'd have nothing to say about me except that I fought heroically, as if the only thing I'd ever done was Have Cancer.
2) ...because I guess her brain cancer was of the variety that makes you not you before it makes you not alive.
3) People talk about the courage of cancer patients, and I do not deny that courage. I had been poked and stabbed and poisoned for years, and still I trod on. But make no mistake, in that moment, I would have been very, very happy to die.
4) Never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves" Easy enough to say when you are a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of faults to be found in our stars.
5) Sleeping with the BiPAP all night made my lungs feel almost normal, although, then again, I did not really remember lung normality.
6) You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.
7) That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.
8) ...would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people? Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we are disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare, and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote the Fifty-fifth sonnet about.
9) The real heroes anyway aren't the people DOING things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
10) You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
1 comment:
Your narration ystrday left we wanting to know the end..tho I didn't read the book I could feel as if I was the reader...
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