naming cancer

1

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

excerpted from the Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu
S. Mitchell translation

the relationship between tao and cancer

the tao is universal, eternal, unnameable, the source of everything, a way of living. it is a philosophy of life, a system of principles, a way of acceptance. the philosophy is eternal.

cancer is universal, going strong, named, a way of dying. it is a disease, a malignant and invasive growth, which tends to recur when you try to get rid of it, a thing we have no cure for, no power over. our understanding of it advances.

reconciling the nameless with the named

A Greek physician, Galen, noted a similarity between crabs and tumors, which are often fed by swollen veins, and the Greek word for cancer karkinos was created. This word meant crab, cancer, and the constellation. Cancer was named, and we assumed that we could then wrest power from it, the enemy.

Cancer, to me, is not a foe, an enemy. It is part of the Tao, who gives birth to both good and evil. Cancer has as much right to be a part of the world as I do. The world is full of all sorts of life forms, including parasites, who earn their livings off of others.
My doctors have tried to excise it, to irradiate it, to starve it - shrink the swollen veins that supply it. Despite their best efforts, these techniques have not been wholly successful, but they have kept me alive. 

Looking at cancer as a thing, an endpoint, something that can be picked off, removed, thrown away, has not worked. The cancer has thrived, and me, I am fortunate to have survived.

We have recently learned that I have a defect, a genetic mutation, that is allowing my cancer to take advantage, to multiply, to grow at will. I am in a clinical trial, taking a new drug that is designed to fix this mutation, restore my body to its oneness, allow it to work properly. In this way the cancer is deprived of its swollen veins, and can no longer take what it needs, at will.

Cancer is not an endpoint. It is a living organism, like me, with its own energy. The crab is losing its energy, and I am gaining mine.