Cancer Schmancer

Just listening to a piece on the radio about face transplants, which raises some issues about identity, not surprisingly. These are surgeries in which people, usually burn victims, get a new face from a dead donor. One person who said she would not want one explained that she is quite content with her scarred body. She had lived with it since a fire 21 years ago. Made me think about how we define and evaluate ourselves, so often in physical or visible terms. I am now defined as a cancer survivor -- not an obvious attribute. It colours a lot of my life, especially right now, while I am recovering from treatment. It will affect all the remaining years of my life, I hope, by reminding me how precious and tenuous life is. Makes me wonder who I am looking at on the street, on the subway, in the grocery store; are any of these people like me?

I know I look like my father, but also resemble my mother. We are the people we look like, to some degree. It's inescapable. That's a good thing, in some ways. We carry on the traits we inherit, adding to the delicious stew of life. But we struggle, don't we?, to be different, to add just a bit to the stew -- an original piquance.