#nohairdontcare - Matteo's Stories
/A CONTINUED EDUCATION
For those of you who don't know who Siddhartha Mukherjee is, that is ok. A good friend gave me his book, The Emperor of All Maladies, this January and it was the first I have ever heard of him. To try and put it concisely, it is one of the most beautifully written, intense and difficult reads I have ever had. I worked my way through Siddhartha's history of cancer and would recommend it to anyone who is up for the task. Some might find it surprising that a doctor could write the way that Siddhartha does, but if you've ever met an Oncologist, you know most of them are more than just "doctors".
This Monday (3/30/2015) on your local PBS station, the first of three segments of Ken Burns Presents Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies A Film by Barak Goodman, will be airing. Given the documentaries association with Siddhartha's book, I know I will be sitting down to watch.
I've always had a desire to learn how things work, but the dive into the workings of cancer have been a slow, tentative one. My rational mind tells me that the biology of the body, of cancer, is so diverse, complicated, that I don't need to worry about coming across something that would make me think I made some wrong decision, that there were better treatment options for Kelly, that we could have done something different. But the irrational mind can be powerful.
If we are however, going to continue the fight, I believe the more educated we all are, the better. There is a quote in the review of the Ken Burns documentary by The New York Times that drives home the magnitude of what we are facing. “More will die from cancer over the next two years than died in combat in all the wars the United States has ever fought, combined,” You can read the whole article here - NY TIMES.
Kelly's doctor always says it takes a team to fight cancer, to help someone through diagnosis and treatment. It's going to take more than a team to cure cancer though, to win more battles than we lose. It's going to take all of us doing our own small part that adds up to one large army.
As always I want to thank everyone who has joined our small force.