Die, death, dead, dying...war, battle, fight, warrior

Yesterday, someone asked me a question I think someone else may have asked me a few days ago...

'What do you think caused this?'

As if I knew? Or had a bloody good idea what caused it? Could I have avoided it?

I have no idea. I don't think I could have avoided it: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the female population; 45000 women every year in the UK are diagnosed and 11000 die from it; your risk is reasonably low between 30 and 40 but hell girls, you get past 50 and these odds reduce significantly...

I think I am just unlucky. Shit happens, right? Oh, and then you die...

Now, my brother (remember my father? My mother was fatherlet #2 and fatherlet #1 had two kids...one of them walked up to me when I was at college on the South Coast at the age of 17 and introduced himself as my brother) also asked me this:

'You do think you can beat this, don't you?'

I was stumped. I mean speechless for at least 10 seconds (talking...a lot, comes naturally to me). I didn't know what to say because no one has actually asked me that question in the last week.

I am under the impression that the first question put to breast consultants by a woman when she is told 'You have breast cancer' is this: 'Am I going to die?'.

I believe, hell I know, I am going to die...so are you...just some of us die before others...as Gertrude says to her grieving son in the first act of Hamlet 'Tis common all that lives must die, Hamlet'. Right on Gertrude, you might have been a whoring, back-stabbing cow who married your dead husband's brother straight after said husband's funeral, but you got this life/death thing to a pat...shame it took Hamlet 5 acts...

Anyway, I obviously didn't ask 'the' question of Scouse breast man. What would be the point? How long is a piece of string?

Do I think I am going to die? Yes. Of breast cancer or an associated cancer? No idea. Can I 'beat' breast cancer? Probably.

Probably, The odds are good. I am in good hands with scouse and the yet unknown and unintroduced oncologist. I am young and I imagine they throw the cancer-treatment book at a youngen like me...I mean, Kylie, she is looking pretty hot 3 years down the line, right?

Now that word 'beat'. Actually the language of cancer generally...forget the 'War on Terror' ladies and gentlemen, the real war going on across the world right now is not against fundametalist religious fanatics, it's the 'war on cancer'. I am a warrior. I am going to beat cancer. I am a fighter and I am battling cancer...believe me, there are more soldiers fighting the war on cancer across the world right this minute than al qaeda members hiding in the foothills of Afghanistan...

Actually, I am not. I am not a cancer freedom fighter (and, if some shady US intelligence agnecy has checked out my blog because of the word 'al qaeda' written above, for the record I am not a fundamentalist Muslim with an agenda of violence either). I truly don't see it like that...because I don't see cancer like that. I see cancer as an entirely natural thing...as natural as the common cold, a bunion or psoriasis. All cancer is is a bunch of cells that have gone awry...they are all dividing too fast, joining up and deciding to make some of the other cells join their little trade union. I know cancer kills, but I accept it as part of my life...and what I am about to embark on is not some old testament battle of apocalyptic proportions...it is a bunch of scientific treatments to cure these deviant cells of their malignant unionised-behaviour.

Just think of me as the Maggie Thatcher of breast cancer...