This post could also be called, "What we don't talk about when we talk about cancer". Eve Enslers's new book, "In the Body of the World" talks about many hard, uncomfortable, embarrassing, brutal things that are part of cancer.
I wrote about her book, "in the Body of the World" a few days ago and I highly recommend it to you. In addition to being beautifully written, scrupulously honest and just so amazing in its structure, Ensler's book not only does not pull any punches, it pounds the reader with the physical reality of cancer and treatment. In telling her story she gives us the brutal reality of surgery and chemo and infection and secondary treatments and side effects and pain.
That last bit may seem surprising. In Cancer Land there is a lot of physical pain, but somehow it's not spoken of very directly. But Eve Ensler writes about screaming, and screaming and crying, and sobbing and being exhausted by the physical pain.
She also writes about blood, pus and poop. And she writes about good and bad nurses and bad and good doctors and how hard self-advocacy is when you are weakened by surgery, infection and all that pain.
I started writing this blog years ago because there was so little frank conversation about sex and relationships in Cancer Land and now I'm admiring Eve Ensler for her frank disclosure of the dark, painful, and literally shitty side of cancer too.
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