Breathe
By Edmée Pardo
So much noise around cancer: personal stories, pain, triumphs, shattered economies, revelations, solidarity, medical advances, diabolical pharmaceuticals, foundations, images of sufferers, difficult processes, Nobel prizes, alternative methods, tragedies, fundraising auctions, miracles, movies, survivors, statistics, testimonies, books... especially in this month of October. Why is cancer so much talked about, why is it such a prominent disease when there are worse, better, more expensive, even preventable ones? What is so remarkable about this abnormal growth of cells with its code of immortality?
I have published five books for children over eight years old about cancer, I am trying to make literary the text I wrote during my mother's agony after 11 years with cancer (I don't know if I will succeed), I am writing this text at 6 in the morning, in a few hours I will go to the Senate to celebrate with Eufrosina Cruz, the Mixtec politician I admire, the 10th anniversary of El brasier de mamá now translated into Mixtec. I do not cease to hover around the subject either, as part of a call, as part of a cause, as part of a social whirlpool that does not stop and even less so in these pink days.
