This malignant American
/Everything went well. Rest now.
But what counts as your remaining consciousness spins. Can the months... years... of malignancy that has eaten away at you—carried away countless hours in fatigue, frustration, and doubt—be erased in a day?
Stop. Rest. Recover. Heal. Prepare.
Because it’s not over. Removing the primary tumor, cutting away the necrotic spread, is a good beginning. But what of the root, the runners, the errant cells, hidden now, waiting to multiply and migrate in search of a more accommodating host?
They wait. They wait through the calming assurances that this barbarous cleansing was enough; that the shed dignity and blood count as price paid; that with this abhorrence overcome you can return to the way things were.
That is not the nature of decay. It is ever hungry, ever corrupting. This is the new normal (or perhaps just the old normal with the veneer of invincibility stripped away).
Enervated though you are, healing—truly healing—means slogging forward, committed to ferreting out the disease wherever and whenever it lies. Over months... years... matching the cancer’s dedication and patience.
There can be no half measures. There can be no quarter.
Rest.
Recover.
Heal.
Prepare.
Persevere.
