Who Wants to be a Cancer Survivor?

With all the hype for the upcoming “Stand Up to Cancer” TV celebrity special it seems everyone wants to get some cred for cancer. But it raises this question: What counts for cancer?

Really it used to be that a cancer survivor was the person who had CANCER. Big Time Cancer. They had it bad and then they had surgery that was horrid and disfiguring in some way: some body part was removed. Then they had chemo. Bad chemo; the kind that made you sick enough that you almost died. Not the kind that makes you feel like you want to die but really: you almost died.

Now, and yes it’s that breast-cancer-celebrity-womanist “I’m too pink for my bra” phenomenon: everybody it seems wants to have had cancer. I open Vogue magazine and Rolling Stone and a singer then a model then an up and coming actress are telling their “cancer story”. It can be stage four and both breasts removed or it can be a lumpectomy or maybe a needle aspiration or now maybe even a doctor’s appointment gets you cancer cred?

So mastectomy? lumpectomy? A call back on a questionable mammogram?
Before the September 5th I need to know where I stand. Does the melanoma lump removed from my leg count? It was done outpatient and my leg was numb for hours and I have a long scar on my inner thigh. When asked about it I always say “Knife fight with another girl”. Does dysplaysia of my cervix count? I was 28 and had a great gynecological oncologist at Johns Hopkins. He took a third of my cervix and took a lot of pictures that he told me would be in his next text book. That overnight surgery left me with what is graciously referred to as an “Incompetent Cervix”.

Will my scar and my incompetent cervix allow me to stand up to cancer? Or do I have to sit this one out?