Think About It: Cancer has its way

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 22, 2026

By Bertha D. Cooper

for the Sequim Gazette

I do not want to write this column. I wish cancer was not happening.

I think, too, how much I wrote about my husband’s journey through illness and death. I wonder how much readers want to read these life stories of mine that seem to morph into testimonials of life sorrows and death.

I wonder how much I want to write them.

Why is it I must write it again, and so soon?

Writing is what I do to give life to my thoughts and feelings. It allows me to express myself, to understand and to move on.

Cancer has coincidentally come into two of my families at the same time.

There is the family I came from, and the one I married into.

One member is a contemporary of mine — my sister-in-law — and the other is my stepdaughter, younger than me by 10 years.

One has cancer which started in the colon and the other has cancer that started in the pancreas. Neither have good prospects for cure. Both are beginning palliative care programs — chemotherapy intended to slow the growth of the tumor(s), relieve symptoms and extend their lives despite the will of the terrible cancer. It is understood that it will not cure their cancer.

Both these women are mothers of adult children; one is a grandmother, and the other is looking forward to grandchildren. Both have the support and love of their families.

Both feel more the pain of their children and grandchildren than their own. It is the way of mothers who to the end want to protect their children from pain.

An ancient disease

Cancer has been around as long as humans and animals have existed and today is the leading cause of death worldwide, according to the National Library of Medicine (NLM).

We know that cancers are a variety of aberrations in cell development and multiplication.

Scientists have clumped many different conditions of zealous cell growth under one name: cancer.

The condition of cancer is characterized by cells growing out of control crowding out and rendering healthy cells useless.

Our imaginations cannot grasp the enormous type and number of cells that result in us individually that can be adversely impacted by cancerous growth.

We know that cancer can occur in any part of our body, which makes sense because our bodies consist of cells all unique according to their purpose, such as bone or organ maintenance.

Cancer is an enormously complicated disease, but scientists are working on early detection, determined to find what causes it, how many types there are, which cells are involved, and what cures it.

Chemotherapy is the combination of medicines used to attack and kill cancer cells. It is a tricky endeavor to identify the right therapy for the right cancer cell.

Getting the right brew is complicated.

It is unquestionably difficult and often turns into a toxic brew, toxic enough to kill cancer cells.

Problems arise if while killing cancer cells, the chemotherapy brew harms or kills our healthy cells.

One of my stepdaughter’s early rounds of chemotherapy had to be discontinued when doctors discovered the cancer cells feeding on the chemotherapy.

How weird and how unfair, but of course cancer has no soul; it just seeks to thrive on its host until it is killed or kills its host.

Cancer has its way.

Who has not been hurt or lost someone because of cancer?

Someday we will be bigger than cancer and it will no longer kill us.

Meanwhile we find our hope and our comforts.

One of the comforts my stepdaughter has is a “comfort dragon,” a stuffed animal about 18 inches long. It weighs five pounds and is very cute and cuddly.

Her daughter, my granddaughter, has one too.

My stepdaughter sleeps with it and held it when a doctor came in to talk with her.

She and my granddaughter honored me by gifting me my very own dragon, which I named “Wilma Willbe.”

Wilma is the gift that keeps on giving as she lay comfortably by my side sharing the warmth that inevitably releases when held.

No, she does not and could not take the place of Crabby Cat.

Wilma and her sister dragons are symbols of our hope, love and fighting spirit.

If only we could find the fire of the dragon that will slay the wicked cancer.

Meanwhile we live and die with and around cancer seeking comfort wherever and whenever we can.

We search for hope and offer comfort and love.

We hope it will be a long while before we mourn the loss of those we love to this terrible disease.