Justin Underwood speaks for everyone, when he tells cancer to shove it.
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No, seriously. Fuck it. It is one of the most demeaning, worthless and lethal things on this planet. Famine. War. Disease. Cancer. It ranks up there among some of the worst things to ever happen to us as a civilization, as people, as a world. Some say it is what we are ingesting into our bodies, some say that it is the lives that we are living, and others say that it is just genetics. Pretty much, we are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. That is not the outlook that I have on this. We can rise against it, come together as one world, and wipe it off of this planet once and for all.
I have had a string of women in my family who have had the “curse” of breast cancer. Three generations in a row have had this bestowed upon them. My great grandmother had a partial double mastectomy when I was very young. While this did affect her in some ways, she did live to be well into her 80’s. Not once did I ever see her seem upset, sad or down because of the hand that she was dealt. My grandmother had a double mastectomy a few years back. She has done ok with this transition, I am sure that it carries its own challenges, but she takes it all in stride. My mother, who seems to have had the gene handed down to her from her mother, from which it was handed down to her from her mother, has had a partial mastectomy. I remember when this first happened, the fear and unknowing in her eyes. She tried to be strong, and tell us that it was going to be okay. She had no idea though. She was a single mother raising two boys, yet she tried to keep us without worry, while she herself was full of doubt.
My wife’s side of the family has had a similar fate. Her grandmother, who lived to be 94, had several different types of cancer. She had pre-cervical cancer and kidney cancer. She passed away almost a year ago today. Crazy to think that she is no longer with us, that cancer possibly got the best of her. She had the appetite of a trucker, eating hot dogs at least once a week for years, and she started smoking at the age of 16. She smoked for almost seventy-some years, yet it was not lung cancer that got her.
My wife, my soul mate and my world, has had a few scares of her own. She has had two different types of pre-cancer before the age of 30. She is the strongest, most headstrong and the most giving person that I know. For her to have to battle this twice before reaching 30 is scary. Heather (or H as I affectionately call her), always being the strong-willed and determined person that she is, has defeated this dreadful disease twice.
Our daughter is 19 months old. She is but a wee lassie. It scares me to think that she could have the genes passed down from both sides, that it could one day affect her as well. I am a Papa Bear when it comes to Afton Love, and would do anything in this world that I can to ease her pain, take away her worries, and make her life easier.
Cancer, I would like to sincerely say this to you. I believe that I speak for everyone in this world when I say this. F*CK OFF. GO AWAY.
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Originally published on Gibs Grooming. Reprinted with permission.
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Photo credit: Flickr/Komen Austin