Topic of Cancer

Susan Sontag wrote about illness to liberate us from the wretchedly negative and lurid metaphors society concocted to confine cancer and AIDS patients to a bleak and hopeless landscape. Her recent death, at a ripe, old age, belies the fact that she fought cancer and won for over thirty years.

For at least that many years, I have wondered if individuals who are deaf or blind are more highly evolved members of our species. It made excellent sense to me that these individuals would be more focused and that they would not suffer from such intense and distracting sensory noise levels as "normal" people do. Surely, this increased clarity would lead to a higher level of understanding, sensitivity and intelligence.

When I was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer three years ago, Sontag's books helped me understand why I was so frightened of talking about my prognosis. They convinced me that the concept of evolution should include individuals who have experienced serious illness.

It seems logical to me that serious illness is a formative experience, an experience that can lead to a more highly evolved state of being. Illness evokes changes that feel evolutionary to me. Everything is clearer and better balanced; in some ways, ironically, I actually felt like a better person.

Sontag first tackled the social stigma of cancer in the late '70's, and then, a few decades later, she took on the social stigma of AIDS. Her point was simple, powerful and consistent: society condemns, fears and stigmatizes individuals with cancer and AIDS because these diseases are historic metaphors for death, violence and the apocalypse.

Cancer is frighteningly unpredictable, grows insidiously and provides an agonizing death. AIDS, of course, is a plague.

Sontag's impeccably argued position about cancer in "Illness as Metaphor" published in 1978, shocked society and provided an intellectual refuge for those with cancer. She spurred serious change in medical thinking about treatment and buoyed my own confidence immeasurably.

Why? Because Sontag firmly believed that the 'metaphors and myths' surrounding cancer created a hellish context for individuals who contracted the disease. I can testify that, once diagnosed, one really does feel cursed, or, as she said "punished" and doomed.

In the late 70's, Sontag suggested that the vocabulary of cancer would evolve for the better, and, by the time she wrote "AIDS and Its Metaphors," in 1988, she could say that "…getting cancer is uttered more freely."

She could also point to a new brutal candor used with cancer patients, something I can absolutely identify with as I remember my doctor breaking down in tears as she told me, my husband and our son that my prognosis was "…very, very bad."

I remember toting my CAT scans everywhere and talking about my tumors and treatments until I felt like a science experiment.

We all owe Susan Sontag a great debt, those of us who are, have been or will be ill, and even those of you who will never have that experience. She saw our society clearly, and she helped reshape it in an intelligent and hopeful way.

She did not believe that cancer was incurable, and she lived to prove herself right.

She did not believe AIDS was either a plague or an invasion: neither should we.

She did believe the way we talk about things that frighten us was powerful. So powerful we could hurt each other more with our metaphors than the illness itself.

Sontag was right, on both counts. Perhaps I am too. Perhaps the human becomes a stronger species through illness. If so, there may be an intersection ahead we can all look forward to where we flip the negative and find wisdom in those who are ill.