Cancer Fighting - What Did Hannibal Know That We Don't?

"The sharpest spur that God gives us for battle is contempt for death." Hannibal of Carthage - 318 BC

After a two year hiatus, I have recently gone through the drill of CT and bone scans. This time there was an inordinate delay in getting the results. A couple of nights ago, my doctor called me from Chicago to say that he had personally read the films and that everything was fine. It was in that moment of euphoria and gratitude that I realized that, even though I did not speak of it, the old enemy fear had managed to sneak back into my subconscious mind. I then recalled how, in those terrible years when I was on the death watch, I used to let the details of death dominate my thinking to the exclusion to the more important details of life and future events. It was only after I was able to reach out and seize information based hope that my mindset began to shift to those more important details of future events wherein I was needed to play a part.

Now what, you might ask, does this have to do with Hannibal? Hannibal was not only a military genius, he was a master of illusion and misdirection. He is famous for transporting elephants over the Alps to use in his campaign against Rome.

Actually, he only had 37 elephants and many of these died along the way. These cumbersome beast had little or no actual military value but they inspired fear in the ranks of the Romans, few of whom had ever seen one. Thus, Hannibal succeeded in getting the Roman commanders to concentrate on dealing with the elephants to the extent that they neglected more important matters dealing with the battle before them. The result of this was that Hannibal's army of 40,000 slaughtered an entire army of over 80,000 Romans on the field of Cannae. Clearly the Roman generals would have done well to ignore the elephants and deal with the business of battle.

All too often cancer turns out to be synonymous with death. Strange since there are so many things that cancer cannot do. It cannot destroy love. It cannot take away personal values. It cannot take away hope unless the patient chooses to give it away to those deadly statistics as pronounced by some insensitive doctors. It cannot force one to make unwanted decisions. In short, one might well say that it is far too impotent to be the subject of all consuming fear. Perhaps the patient should quit looking at the elephants and begin to look at those more important details associated with a post remission future. It can and has been done in the lives of numerous exceptional cancer patients.

Now pushing 76, I am well aware that my days on earth are not unlimited. Rather than look at this prospect with fear, I must confess to certain feeling of excitement at the prospect of finally understanding what is on the other side and am looking forward with great interest to what the work will be like in the new dimension. I think of how St. Paul put it when he wrote, "I count that to die is gain". Having fought the good fight he could say this with confidence. He also wrote that whereas hope and faith will end in fruition and realization, love endureth forever. There is absolutely nothing that cancer can do to alter this fundamental truth.