Forty Years War: A Place Where Cancer is the Norm

This article can be found here.

October 27, 2009

Gina Kolata, the author of this article writes an emotional and inspiring article about cancer patients at MD Anderson, the nation's leading cancer research center in Houston, Texas. She uses intimate stories of cancer patients and small anecdotes to bring herself closer to the piece. For example, she alludes to Tomas Mann's "Magic Mountain", a story about a introverted sanatorium in the 'flatlands' where finding a cure for tuberculosis is the main mission of its inhabitants. After creating this personal connection to the article, Kolata then offers the reader several emotionally touching stories of cancer patients at the hospital. They are patients like 35-year-old Mindy Lanoux of San Antonio, who has melanoma that has spread to her liver and lungs, her odds of surviving in the single digits. They are patients like 35-year-old Mindy Lanoux of San Antonio, who has melanoma that has spread to her liver and lungs, her odds of surviving in the single digits. Also, a Dr. Martin Raber, an oncologist — and a cancer patient himself — at Anderson. The sources she uses are unique because they all have cancer, yet they come from all different levels of experience with the disease- from doctors to nurses to ordinary patients. This backs the author's theme of discovering the prevalence of the devastating disease in this "parallel universe, where nothing matters but cancer". She continues to tell these series of stories of cancer patients, accounting for everything from hope and hopelessness, fortune and misfortune, life and death. Kolata has created an epic out of an article. The rest of the article continues in this fashion as short, touching quotes are injected throughout the body of the work. (For example, when Mrs. Toland was speaking with her son George: “Most people lose their innocence in little doses as they go through life. You lost yours all at once.”) The article ends with the story of Dr. Raber who had the disease plague him and his once 'perfect' career, leading him to realize that cancer wasn't about curing a disease or succombing to it; it was about dealing with it for the rest of your life, because of the high risk that it with return. But he finishes on a positive note, understanding that having cancer affect his life so deeply has allowed him to better understand his patients and their own battles with cancer.