I'm pissed at cancer again. Those sinister little cells that spin out of control, unwanted and dysfunctional in someone's body. My sister this time. Again. Already.
Being angry at cancer is silly. Just a cellular error, the malignancy doesn't have an agenda to take my sister - or anyone else - out. It only seems that way. Seems cancer returns with a vengeance, malicious, with the intent to eat my sister up, gobble her down like the legendary big bad wolf.
Originally diagnosed with breast cancer in spring of 2010, she underwent surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, followed by estrogen blocking treatment. Just recovering from treatment, tumors struck again, in brain, in liver, in lymph nodes.
What I'm really pissed off about is the prevalence of cancer, its skyrocketing incidence in human and animal populations. Hell, while I was visiting Montana during my sister's brain surgery and immediate recovery, I could not help but notice the destruction wreaked on mountain trees by the little pine beetle. How stands of red, dead, and dying trees looked like tumors on the hills, how the disease is spreading, so like a cancer amongst the mountain pines. For centuries, there's been a balance between the mountain pine beetles and the forests, bugs culled only the weakest of trees. Now the temperatures are just a tad higher - a degree or so - and the soil a touch more acidic. The new environment shifts the scale toward the bugs, they thrive and the trees die - in groves.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to start to get it. We're using the land and water too hard and it's having deleterious effects. Sooner or later, the effects are coming to get us all, one way or the other. What's it going to take before we - each and every one of us - does something different, something serious, something to lighten the load on this old earth before it falters and finally dies? I worry that it will take too much and when we finally recognize we have to act, it could be too late.
I am using the power of the sun to dry the laundry. I rode my bike to the grocery store and to the nursery for fall lettuce, kale, and broccoli starts. These are small steps, but there is less than no excuse not to take them. To do the things I can to stem the tides of global warming, excessive power consumption and environmental degradation. I wish I had the power to eradicate cancer, and that is probably what pisses me off most. No matter what I do, it will still be here. Cancer will still threaten my family, my friends, even my dogs and wild animals.
But I must exercise the power I do have. the power to change what I can. Besides, the bike rides are lovely and the laundry smells great fresh off the line. I hope to reduce global warming and eventually save somebody somewhere from cancer.
