Cancer and Anger

Do you have any idea how angry I’ve been? It started in my mother’s womb, while I was being born. Something stopped my passage out. Was she given some kind of drug or was she just too weak to help me out? This is the scene: I was moving through, everything was fine, well, as fine as the insides of a uterus can feel to a silky skinned, fine boned baby. Eyes clamped shut. No idea what was ahead of me and suddenly, out of the blue, obstruction. It seemed then that the first thoughts of my life flooded my mind. Questions were being asked of me, fear was imprinting itself in every cell. But while I was moving through, sliding and slipping, sighing inside, there were no thoughts, a kind of music relaxing my efforts, softening and paving my way.
Suddenly, a rush of liquid energy, the va-va-va-voom from all around me ceased to exist and no matter how hard I tried to push forward I could not. I was stopped, stuck, fucked.
And now, when I have to face cancer, all the orthodox minded people around me just can’t understand why I don’t, won’t trust doctors. Shall we start with my obstetrician? Rather, my mothers’? The one who told her it was okay to drink beer and smoke cigarettes while I grew inside of her? I know, we’re not supposed to dwell on the past, it was another life right? Nothing to do with who I am now…The fine Egyptian baby medical practitioner who told mum bed care was what was needed, she had to be careful, if she didn’t watch out, she might lose me, or lose her life. Off to a good start I see. Imagine how she must have felt, stuck between the god dammed sheets for all that time, no air conditioning in Egypt in the 1960s. No wonder the beer. And my father probably wasn’t much help, what with his bridge playing, work commitments, the yacht club and the sporting club.
So, there I found myself, with her clammy, bumpy, hot sweaty uterus cramped down on my face and neck, suctioning itself onto my back and bum, and somewhere far away, I could hear crying and loud voices, and I thought it was the end. It was hell in there, no offense mother, but it’s just not meant to go that way. I know now. My girlfriend is a Doula. She’s from Holland, and in that country, the majority of women have their babies naturally, without medical intervention, all those needles and blood samples, the epidural and caesareans. Not for those big boned Dutch women, oh no.
I remember - you probably don’t believe that I can remember but I do - that eventually I just had to move. I started to push myself forward, tried to ignore the flesh pressed against me and squirmed ahead, and my voice opened up and I started to scream and cry and reach for the sky. Somehow the sounds helped, my movement quickened, in stops and starts I approached the exit, I could feel it. Somehow the heat was dispersing and a cool breeze teased at me.
And then, wouldn’t you know it? Without my permission, a steel contraption is shoved in through what I knew was my exit and two cold, hard pieces of metal poked at me, hurt my face, dented my shoulder, and within minutes, the pieces clamped down on either side of my head, I could feel the controls out there, and my movement was interrupted and someone else’s movement took over. I came shooting through, screaming in the biggest rage of my life.