Cancer is a plague, not a recent one and not just on humans; it is a plague against almost every form of animal life. It's a disease that sets a creature's body against itself, where something goes haywire in cellular replication, in which some cells go crazy, turning malignant and spreading, into tumors, into other organs, other systems, other structures. Cancer gnawed on the bones of the dinosaurs, and for all our advances in healthcare, it still kills humans, today.
I write this as someone who hasn't suffered this horrible disease personally, but that doesn't mean cancer hasn't touched my life. I've had friends and family afflicted by this horror. I've lost friends and family members to cancer. And sometimes, it's not just horrifying, it's sudden. A dear friend of ours was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and within a short span of months she was just... gone, leaving behind a distraught husband and daughter.
My wife had a complete hysterectomy in her late 30s, due to pre-cancerous lesions in her uterus and cervix. She was lucky, it was caught early, and she recovered completely.
My father had six inches of colon removed due to cancer. He was lucky. They caught it very early, and after the surgery, he was clear, with no need of chemotherapy or radiation.
My brother had cancer of the lymph nodes in his neck as well as colon cancer. Both times he suffered surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. It was debilitating, but he survived.
Two of my best friends also had cancer of the lymph nodes. Like my brother, they underwent chemotherapy and radiation, as well as surgery. Like my brother, they survived.
My sister, on the other hand, did not.
My sister was a single mother of twin boys, whose father abandoned them when my sister's pregnancy became known. In the early 1980s she fought breast cancer. She had a partial mastectomy, and since she had her sons to support, she would report to the hospital for chemotherapy on Friday afternoon, so she was well enough to go to work Monday morning, to keep a roof over all their heads. She won that fight.
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Then, many years later, after her sons were grown men, the cancer returned, with a vengeance. It began with a resurgence of the breast cancer, which spread. My sister was by then in poor health already, after a diagnosis of epilepsy some years earlier that forced her into early retirement. This new cancer was aggressive and fast-moving. She entered into treatment, with several surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy culminating with a horrible stuff that the nurses called the "Red Death," a biocide that kills the cancer just a little faster than it kills the patient. She suffered through this during that awful year when we lost our parents, within eight months of each other. All of that in time became too much. It became clear the cancer was winning. It had spread throughout her body, into every major system. She was in agony, and finally refused further treatment other than pain medications. A few weeks later she died, with her two sisters at her side.
I was, in some ways, closest to this sister out of all my four siblings. She was closest to me in age. Her twins were born when I was 13, and when I was a teenager, I used to haul them around with me a lot; they were more like little brothers than nephews. I took them hunting, fishing, and camping, and frankly, they were cute kids who drew a lot of attention from girls.
I loved my sister very much. It's been several years and I still miss her. My siblings and I were hit hard by her death. Losing our parents was hard, but with this the reaper had reached into our generation. It hurts.
So, when the news came out of Joe Biden's spreading cancer, I am more inclined to be sympathetic.
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Look, Joe Biden was a lousy president. The worst in my lifetime, certainly. He's not a good person. He's corrupt, manipulative (or at least, he was, before the senility set in) and his family's machinations would have embarrassed the Medicis. But some things transcend politics, and this is one of them. We know now his cancer is spreading. From what I've read, from what I've heard, it's not looking particularly encouraging. And that's too bad.
And so, unlike some on social media, I will not celebrate this. I will not say that Joe Biden "had it coming." This awful disease has reached its black, taloned hands into my own life too many times. Venal and corrupt they may be, but old Joe's family loves him. Venal and corrupt old Joe's career may have been, but it doesn't merit this kind of thing as punishment. It just doesn't. And so I will say it flat out: In this fight, I wish Joe Biden all the best, and may he recover as best he can.
I take great pride in objectivity, in being able to look at issues and events impartially. I can't do that here. I just can't. Cancer may not have hit me directly, at least not yet, but it's recurred too often in people I care about. One day we may find a reliable cure for this ancient curse. But we haven't yet, and I won't wish it upon, or celebrate it, in anyone. Not Joe Biden. Not anyone.
