Dear Cancer, You Greedy Bastard

Dear Cancer,

You killed my sister Jill, the other day, you sick f*ck.

You cut her down in the prime of her life when you invaded her eyeball. One week after that diagnosis, she had her eye removed. Some wonderful artist somewhere made a glass eye to look like her other eye. It was a work of art and a work of science, as her doctors were able to connect it to her existing eye muscles so it would track with her real eye. It tracked pretty well, most of the time, although I trained myself to always look into her real eye, anyway.

But Cancer, you were relentless. You hid the ocular melanoma from her and her immune system just long enough to metastasize, sending cancer sleeper cells throughout her blood stream. No one knew that, of course, when she decided to have her eye removed in a desperate attempt to get away from you, forever.

My sister adjusted to only having one eye and less depth perception. Then she lived what remained of her life with a vengeance. She ran marathons on the North Pole. She biked for days in the Oregon mountains every year with Cycle Oregon and completed the Death Ride Tour of the California Alps. She ran 5 miles a day every day to boost her immune system against your relentless quest to kill her even though she hoped she had cut you out of her body.

But you won, cancer, you greedy bastard. You took my sister's eye and then stalked her for six years. She hoped she had escaped your demonic clutches but then you reared your ugly head in her liver. And then in her lungs. And then in her scalp and her brain. And in a matter of months, you shut her liver down and dealt the death blow. You killed her. You won. You bastard.

And for what? What did you get out of snuffing out the life of a person who worked tirelessly to make the world a better place? My sister never failed to make contributions big and small because she could, leaving behind two heartbroken kids, a devastated mother, sister, bother-in-law, nephew and many, many friends? Like a suicide bomber, when she died, you died. So what was the point of that?

So hear this, Cancer. We are coming for you. We are getting closer and closer to figuring out how to eradicate your ability to murder us. Immunotherapy is promising and trials are commencing. My sister Jill had been accepted into a cutting-edge immunotherapy clinical trial in New York but you killed her before she could get there. You are pure evil.

You are a force to be reckoned with, Cancer, but you have no soul. You have no ideology, no beliefs, no mission and no end game unless eradicating all living creatures is your end game. But if that is the case, you'd eventually have no living bodies to invade and kill. Then you would also become extinct.

So, Cancer, here's my message to you. We will hunt you down. We will find you. We will figure out how to stop you. And we will win. Unfortunately, it will be too late for my sister and too late for so many other people.

But the day will come, Cancer. We will kick your narcissistic demonic ass. You have it coming, on behalf of my sister Jill and so many others.

Sincerely,

A heartbroken sister