Cancer is an illness that we can all relate to, one way or another. Whether it is because we ourselves have been diagnosed with it or because someone we love has; it is an illness that has/will everyone. Today, February 4th is World Cancer Day. It is a day to bring attention to an illness that has claimed countless lives, encumbered so many others and brought tears to everyone at some point in their life.
Cancer is an illness that has no mercy; it creeps up on you and creates havoc. My father died of cancer many years ago. It was not prostate cancer, lung cancer or liver cancer; it was melanoma. Yes, melanoma, a cancer that can be easily treated, prevented and hardly associated with death. What most people do not understand about melanoma is that what we see on the outside, the visible part of your skin can be very eluding of what is occurring within your skin.
On World Cancer Day we promote the idea that “We Can, I Can”, the notion that we as individuals and as a worldwide community can work together to help diminish the effects that cancer has on us. Through education, regular checkups, and proactive self-monitoring; we can hope to identify the illness at stages where it can be treated successfully. We can be educated as to our individual and cultural risk factors. We can manage the illness before it gets the best of us.
My father’s melanoma (an illness that runs in my family) was untreated. He being a man that did not like doctors, didn’t believe he could become ill or understood the gravity of what melanoma could turn into. He chose to ignore the small brown marks around his face. He loved fishing and spent hours exposed to the sun, no sunblock, no awareness of the harm he was doing to himself. The result of this lack of mindfulness, lack of acting was deadly. The cancer grew within his skin until it had grown too deep to remove all of it. He underwent several surgeries and radiation. Radiation treatments that burned his skin exposing parts of his skull.
He eventually could not eat as his throat and mandible too damaged from the radiation. He became so debilitated after radiation that his body started to give in. He died a man that was hardly recognizable. The healthy man with fair skin and green-grayish eyes I knew so well became a disfigured, frail man will eyes that lost all their energy.
Watching my father wilt away to cancer was an experience I will never forget. Until today (over 15 years after his death) it stills tears at my heart when I recall the experience. It was the most painful experience I have ever had; seeing my father destroyed by an illness that had no mercy on his skin, his organs, his mind, and his overall spirit.
I wish I, as a young girl, were more knowledgeable back then to the dangers of melanoma. I wish he would have been proactive and visited his dermatologist, gone to his yearly skin checks. I wish we could have done something more to help him before it became too large for us to remedy.
There are so many things I wish…unfortunately wishes are lost to the wind at this point. My father is gone and his memories still with me. Cancer is a relentless illness, an illness that destroys people, families, and souls. For this reason, today on World Cancer Day I write this account of my past experience with cancer in hope that someone out there will understand that action and education are the best weapons against this illness. “We Can, I Can”…You Can make a difference by simply being an active and educated friend, mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter…someone that can help save a life even your own.
