If Cancer was standing in front of you, what would you do?

Please don't take offense at this, but I find your question really odd: "What would you do if cancer was standing in front of you?"

What do you mean, "if"?  For most of us here, cancer IS standing in front of us.  Regardless of the stage of our cancer at diagnosis, we will bear a lifetime risk that it might return -- especially (ironically) if we had that "slow-growing, treatable form" that is estrogen receptor-positive.

Cancer is always within our field of vision, and will be until (literally) we die of something else. 

Posting your question here is sort of like asking people in their 70's and 80's, "What would you do if old age was standing in front of you?"

Huh?

otter 

[Edited to add:  Oh, wow.  I just read the part about throwing paint balloons at a canvas to symbolically eradicate cancer.  Brilliant.] 

I would kick it in the you know what.

I would decapitate it with a sword, and then throw the severed head to the alligators . . . or, better yet, throw it into a swamp infested with ravenous gators . . . sorry to sound so gory, but facing a biopsy of the left (non-BS) breast on Thursday as a result of a very suspicious f/u mammo - so my thoughts are rather anxious at this point!

I would sneak up behind it without saying a word, like it has done to me.  I would kick it behind it's knees, making it lose its balance, like it's done to me.  I would pour acid on it to poison it, like it's done to me.  I would hurt all its friends and family, like it has done to me.  I would make certain to keep it in a state of fear, not knowing if it would survive, like it's done to me. 

Not getting the "metaphor" either.

Why would you want to personify something that has killed our parents, our friends, our families, for some, children or grandchildren????

Maybe suggesting a coming face to face with a serial killer in a courtroom? Only inviting the victims? I could see asking family members to watch an execution. But asking the executioned to face the executioner?

Most of us will survive & I don't see us as victims. I am trying to understand the logic to the question. I just see it as another way for someone else to play on our emotions.

Were the balloons PINK?

I can't even watch football with-out this being shoved up my who~haw....

Well said, Linda!!  Ditto to that........

I don't feel anger towards "the cancer."  Afterall, it was my own cells that somehow went awry -- whether from stress or carcinogens in the environment or in our foods, or the hormones I was taking, or very possibly a combination of all of those factors and maybe more.  But cancer isn't something separate from me.

I guess if I could give it a shape or a  form so that it could stand in front of me, I'd ask it, "Where did you come from?" and "What caused or allowed you to happen?"

I was recently telling a friend I ran into who didn't know about my dx (he commented on my new curly hair, and the conversation went from there.. ) that I wouldn't wish what I've been through this past year and a half on my worst enemy (if I had one), but that I'm not the same person I was a year and a half ago either.  And what I meant by that is I'm gentler and much calmer -- slower to get upset about anything.  And I have a much deeper appreciation for my family, my friends, and life's simple pleasures, and I think I'm more compassionate -- all the result of what I've been through.  So while I certainly wouldn't have chosen it, nor would I thank it for coming into my life, I can honestly say I don't harbor any malice or hatred towards it either.  All I would want to know is, how -- how did it happen, and how can we stop it from happening to others.     Deanna  

beat it with a stick and crush it till there was nothing left

EmilyWard - Do you have breast cancer?