Cancer - Nature

When we talk about cancer as humans, we immediately view it as a perversion of nature, of the natural order of things. It's a growth, something malignant, it's terrible, it destroys. Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. It invades the body like a virus, but it's not necessarily a virus. Some even travel the body creating cancers in various places. It is the body turned against itself.

This is the basic component of living things, the cell. It is in plants, animals, insects, fungus. It blows around as pollen in the breeze. Cells are in the lakewater - protazoans, planeria, surface skimmers, algae, fish. Cells are everywhere in nature.

But is cancer nature?

It's caused by abnormalities in the cell's genetic makeup. Something in the coding goes wrong (wrong... is it really wrong or just different?), and the cell becomes this terrible thing, replicating and destroying.

It's caused by all types of diet imbalances or viruses or drug use, but does that make it any less natural?

I've talked about Jeff before - in my horseback riding journal entry. He was diagnosed a few weeks ago with a rapid brain cancer - the kind of thing that would make me panic, that makes me want to panic for him. He's 51, healthy enough, and one of those human beings that everyone knows not because he's over the top, but because he's one of the most humble, kind, caring people one would ever meet. Even those adjectives do him little justice.

Jeff has gone from the initial shock to acceptance with the kind of grace that is only told in the likes of religious fiction such as The Bible. He smiles humbly, without questioning "the Lord's plan" for him, and knows well that he may not live to see fourteen months or four years or tomorrow. He's gracious for the condolences, the people showing up in tears at his front door in disbelief, and he's gracious for the life he's had and the life he has left.

Is this nature? Is cancer, a bringer of doubt and death, something we've quickly categorized as wrong - an abnormality - a destroyer of life - is it as important to the world as rainfall and the change of seasons? No... is it as important to the human race as the air we breathe?

I cannot begin to know even though I begin to question.