I thought my experience was rare. During my first cancer, my parents ensured I received the medical care, the pills, and the nutrition I needed to stay alive. Physical, but not emotional, survival. But decades later, I see that repression to the point of cruelty is common. During my second cancer, I watch as healthcare providers act like decapitated beings, robots with salaries who still eat and drink. But I am neither meat nor machine. Cancer survival: We are more than bodie

Small slights have big consequences for us traumatized folk. Years of abuse sensitizes us to harshness and cruelty of all sorts. I was thinking about this today as a doctor’s office asked me to fill out forms using their new online system. Did I ever have cancer? Did I ever suffer from depression and anxiety? Standard stuff, but I could feel my pulse quickening, physically and emotionally. Facing an empty patient portal, I am reminded that trauma does not evaporate into thin

Recovering from trauma, I use hatred not as a vehicle for hurting others, but as a vehicle for changing myself, for changing the world. Eventually, hatred will be displaced by joy and curiosity.

We are still mired in disease-centred care. As to being seen as a whole human in the healthcare system, you are out of luck.

Medicine as transaction. I suppose I am not suited for it. But I ask myself, what are these startling realities calling me to do?

A Canadian cancer patient shares observations from the front lines of an overtaxed and underfunded system