Where is cancer coming from?

My wife’s cousin passed away last year. She had lung & throat cancer that apparently spread to her bones and elsewhere. She’d never smoked.

She was only 62 and should have had many years left in her. But her diagnosis came late. The cancer was already at stage-4. She fought the good fight with chemo and radiation, but there was little chance of recovery.

Why is there such a prevalence of cancer in this country? There are a LOT of people in my neck of the woods that have some form of cancer and it seems to be everywhere else as well.

I still believe my leukemia was brought on because of a near-decade of intense stress I had in my 50’s. Some studies have found that stress lowers the body’s immune system making it easier to contract a disease. There is no proof that’s what happened to me. It could have been something else. But as far as I know, there is no genetic component in my family.

So it makes you wonder where all these various cancers are coming from. Our food? Our air?

Could it be from the nuclear dump site in Hanford, Washington where 56 million gallons of chemical and nuclear waste, stored since 1950 in 177 underground tanks, is leaking?

Or maybe back in 1949 when that same facility released unfiltered radioactive particles into the air where it was distributed over populated areas.

Or maybe God’s just playing poker with the Devil like in the Book of Job except on a bigger scale.

Whatever it is, the cancer thing is a pain in the butt. I’m tired of losing friends and family. And, frankly, I’m not real happy about my leukemia either.

Okay, enough bitching. I still feel good and the sun is shining. Yay, Winter’s over!

[Photo by National Cancer Institute]