Another Reason MyQueen Won't Let Me Touch Her Breasts.

Yay!

Science beats cancer in double overtime! That’s what the headline should read. It doesn’t, but that’s probably because it isn’t true.  Science hasn’t beaten cancer yet—but it’s getting closer. 

This week a team of University of Minnesota scientists announced that they’d found the enzyme the causes breast cancer.  According to the scientists, the U enzyme (what, you didn’t think they were gonna call it the “Me enzyme?” Nope, we’re blaming this one on you.) mutates breast DNA and that allows the cancer to set up home.  Think of it as a traditional zombie movie, with the U enzyme playing the role of the accidentally uncovered zombie toxin. The cancer cells are the doomed teenagers, and your breast is the ravaged town.

“I’ll be back.” 

Wrong zombie movie.  That was the California gubernatorial election.

Now, scientists can monitor the U enzyme for early detection, and that should also lead to a way to stop the mutating enzyme in the first place. 

It’s a great day for breasts!

It’s also a good day for other cancer fighters too, because the scientists are saying there’s a good chance that this U enzyme could be the cause in up to one-third of all other cancers.

Wait.

“good chance…could be…up to…”  Translation: “We have no frackin’ clue.”

Still, it could be. It might be, and some days we take what we can get. Especially when other news reports are telling us that cases of Alzheimer’s are expected to triple by 2050.

If you read these reports together and apply the rule of media guestimated statistics, you see that while one-third of cancers will be cured, three times more people will get Alzheimer’s Disease.

Yay Cancer! Wha—?

So that means that if I dodged a cured cancer bullet, I’ve got a new target on my brain that says “Alzheimer’s.” I gotta tell ya, that blows.

It blows really bad.  Here’s the thing: Cancer sucks. Nobody wants it. It’s a slow painful death, and most current cancer “cures” suck as bad as the disease. People don’t hold up banners saying, “I’m a cancer survivor,” because they want sympathy. They hold up the banners because they can. Because they looked death in the eye and said, “not today” and death said, “Uh, okay. Can I interest you in some Avon on my way out, then?”

To me, Alzheimer’s is worse.   I don’t want to forget who I am. What’s more, I don’t want to forget people like my PirateQueen. I love MyQueen, and that love may have come easy but it was also an earned love that was hard fought for. Every day she and I find ways to love, honor and remember each other over ourselves. I don’t want to forget that, and I definitely don’t want to think of her suffering through me forgetting that.

“Who are you?”

“Here, read this blog, it’ll explain everything.”

“Who wrote this crap.”

“You did. It was part of your charm…”

I don’t want her to live through the horror of my writing every day.

I’d rather have my cancer back.