It may seem too basic of a question for me to pose, but now that I have been diagnosed (repeatedly) with cancer, as well as undergone chemo for it, it occurred to me to wonder what exactly cancer is. 

I, like most people, have a general sense of what cancer is, and that general sense is not good.  There is not, after all, any “good” cancer.  They all seem to be awful, and there seems to be a heck of a lot of it going around.  But I really do not know much about it.  I could try and find out more about it.  Being of the generation of which I am a part, I could just Google it and see what I could glean about it.  (If I were a generation or so younger, I probably would just text or Instagram or something someone to ask about it; if I were much older, I would consult the World Book, being sure to check the most recent annual update for the latest information.)  Yet I have a hard and fast rule against looking up anything related to my cancer on the Internet.  And, like all hard and fast rules, I have broken it from time to time and then found myself in a state of panic for several days afterwards based on what I read, which if I understood it at all was hopefully taken out of context. 

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