My Vietnam

Cancer is a struggle with guerrilla forces scattered in the jungles, like Vietnam. Cancer lives among peace-loving civilians, like insurgents in Iraq. Such wars are difficult or impossible to win by conventional means, although we try. There is bound to be collateral damage. In Vietnam, we dropped napalm and Agent Orange to defoliate the jungles, so we could bomb villages and rout out the enemy forces. It was a technological solution to a distinctly human problem. And it didn't work. It devastated millions of civilians, destroyed societies and ripped at the fabric that was needed to create whole communities, taking years to heal, if ever.

We approach cancer the same way, dropping chemicals across the jungle, and using surgical strikes and radiation to flush out the insurgents. The first chemotherapy arose from war technology, experiments with mustard gas in World War II. Maybe there is a time for this -- could something so many people believe in be wrong? -- but conventional war did not work in Vietnam and seems unlikely to be effective in Iraq, where our concern now is to leave in a way that minimizes the damage we have done. Just as people believe in war, they believe that we can use violence to destroy cancer and set the stage for health. I respect the power and industrial efficiency of these approaches, but do they recognize the true richness of disease and healing? Do they look for short-term gains - mission accomplished -- while ignoring the long-term implications? Each battle destroys infrastructure and trust, inciting future revolutions, setting us up for the next war.

Perhaps modern technology is not the solution. Perhaps napalm and bombings will not bring about the healing that we seek. Perhaps cancer is personal, and we must meet our own raw karma, one on one. Not General Patton but Mahatma Gandhi.

I walk through the jungle. There is real danger here. It is clear that there are forces trying to kill me. I am no fool. I recognize this. I am sick. I am tired. I am hungry. I face death at every turn. But the cancer is not outside myself. It is within. It is my Vietnam. It my heart of darkness, the meeting with Mista Kurtz in a jungle that redefines you or consumes you. There is no substitute for the journey, no shortcuts, no unmanned vehicles to fly above the fray. You need boots on the ground to come face to face with yourself in the stark horror of real life. This is not a war. It is a crucible we must pass through on our way to either death or new life.