Thursday, September 17, 2009

Strictly metaphorical

They keep telling me that cancer is a journey, but sometimes it feels more like a prison. On a good day it's a minimum-security prison with a golf course, riding lessons, and a feng shui class. On a bad day it's Guantanamo. Either way, the food stinks.

Sometimes cancer feels like an unweeded garden where pokeweed colonizes the raspberry patch and poison ivy twines among the tomatoes, so you call in an expert gardener who strafes the whole plot with napalm.

Sometimes cancer feels like a visit to a lunatic asylum where the patients wear rags on their heads and communicate via vomit, but when it's time to leave, you can't find the door.

Sometimes cancer feels like a nightmare in which you're driving merrily along the Pacific Coast Highway when suddenly a hand reaches over and steers you straight off the cliff, and you keep falling and falling, awaiting the crash. The brakes and steering won't do a thing in free-fall, but go ahead and fiddle with the radio if it'll make you feel any better.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I’m mentally sending you a key to get out… and fabulous meal.

I’ve just smacked the evil gardener on the head with a hoe and dragged him away. In his place, I’m sending in Mr. Greenjeans.

I’m sending you a giant neon exit sign.

If none of that helps, I’m sending you a gargantuan parachute. Oh… and I’ve also changed the station on the radio. Bob Marley is singing, Every Little Thing’s Gonna Be Alright!

XXOO! Betsy

Unknown said...

That sudden push from a hand, out of nowhere, into freefall, from PCH--wow, that's it. That's the terror...Thanks, bev. Great writing.
carol, in portland

O'Nonymous said...

But remember when cancer had NO feeling? The threat was covert and limitless -- rogue Mohamed-Atta cells secretly reproducing.

(Yow! Did I say Mohamed Atta? I did!)