Health and Sickness is an Invention

We're getting into some heavy stuff today. 

As I'm sure you gathered from the title. 

This concept of sickness as an invention is not new for many cancer patients but perhaps they did not know how to put it in words. I sure didn't until now. But when I heard it my entire mind went AHA.

Let's back track. I'm reading the works of the philosopher Foucault for my literary theory course. 

WAIT! Come back! Keep reading- I swear I won't be boring.

Foucault examines the way power and knowledge coexist in our culture. He argues that forms of knowledge (discourse) become power (practice.) There's some basic framework. In addition to that, he writes extensively on health and sickness. 

Acccording to Foucault, health and sickness is an invention. How is that an invention?

Because it is unconciously spoken of as a moralism. It's good vs. evil all over again. 

Which he argues, is arbiturary. There is no good and evil. These are categories that we (us silly humans) have set up for ourselves. But they do not exist.

So what is evil and what is good here? It should be obvious. Health is depicted as the universal good, right? That makes sense. There's this constant discourse all day, every day, of what is healthy. To be healthy is to be good. It is to succeed physically. 

Health is seen as a capacity. Cardiovascular power, Foucault's words, is the goal. How long can we live? How much can we physically endure?

And that is just another form of discourse. Of writing, of thinking, of believing. This discourse (fancy talk for writing/vocalizing) isolates the body into a moralistic idea. 

How is that a problem? 

Think about it.

If my body has cancer, as it had just a few months ago, am I sick?

Physically, we think 'sure.' But is my being sick? 

When it's asked in that framework, don't you want to say no? (I hope you do.)

Of course not. My mind is not broken. I am not a sick person. One part of my BODY just happens to have cancer. My cells have chosen to divide in the worst way but does that make the rest of my body sick? My cancer originated in my chest, in the lymphnodes of my thymus (little organ thing by my heart,) but the rest of my body was physically strong. 

So was I sick? Not technically, right? Just one aspect of my body. Not the entire body as a whole. Not my mind which I would argue is more essential than my body itself. 

Is the cardiovascular power to live longer, to physically endure as long as possible more essential than the mind? 

That could be a matter of opinion. We could argue that the mind can't exist without the body and vice versa.

So it would stand to reason that the body cannot be sick if the mind is whole, right? So if I have cancer, am I sick? 

No. That's a moralism. That's a category of discourse. 

What do we associate with sick? Think of what comes to mind. Frail. Weak. Not well. The lesser of what is good.

Hello, moralism! Get your moralisms off my body! 

This helps set up that boundary that often surrounds cancer patients and survivors. This wall of sickness comes up around us to separate our weaker moralism from the greater good of health. 

And this doesn't diappear when you're in remission. I am still surrounded by a wall of moralisms that separate me from the collective good. My body was sick, therefore the rest of my being was categorized as sick and my being now is in recovery from the sickness.

But what if it was never sick to begin with?

My mind remained entact. The rest of my physical being was strong. Hell, it was the medicine that made me weak, not the origin of the 'sickness.' Does that make the truth of medicine manufactured? 

Acorrding to Foucault, yes. Medicine is just a tool to fix the biological issue. But we perceive medicine as this moralistic good. Which gets even more complicated when we think of the COST of medicine, but let's save that for another time. 

Let's not just think of medicine here but also isolation. What do we do with the sick? We hospitalize them, right? We isolate them in clinics, hospitals, doctor's offices. We place the sick into a matrix (Foucault's words) of health. (And I know, that's what we need to do)

I love this quote from Foucault on this idea of isolation and the sick, "Different power apparatuses are called upon to take charge of "bodies," not simply so as to exact blood service from them or levy dues, but to help, and if necessary, constrain them to ensure their own good health. The imperative of health: at once the duty of each and the objective of all." -Foucault, "Practice and Knowledge"

The duty of each and the objective of all. Right? Isn't that the way we see health? How do we get to health? By isolating the body (placing it in the matrix of health- doctors office,etc.) and then using medicine to bring health. To eliminate the sick and to get rid of the bad. To make strong and to eliminate the weakness. 

I doubt I'm making sense but let's roll with it. 

So if medicine is perceived as good, isn't the expectation that we should always take it if it's said to be needed? This gets more complex when you think of cancer though. Is chemotherapy good? Would you put it in that moralistic category?

I want to say yes but all the long standing nerve damage and pain in my hands, legs, and feet wants me to say no. 

My lack of fertility (which we don't know yet, if it's permanent) wants me to say no. 

My increased risk for heart problems and secondary blood cancers wants me to say no.

But my cancer free cells want to scream YES. 

Chemotherapy is essentially a poison. But we accept (using this term loosely) it as medicine because it poisons the sickness thus destroying the bad. 

Am I healthy now that I am cancer free? Despite all the long standing impacts chemotherapy has wreaked on my body? Is my body good?

That's a complicated question. Physically I am now weaker than I was before due to the medicine I received despite the absence of cancer. 

What if we just throw all those moralisms out the window?

I'm not saying cancer isn't bad, it is. It sucks, I hate everything about it. But it's not some moralistic evil. It's a circumstance, an unlucky and horrible one, that just happens. It's not evil, it's cell mutation. we perceive it as a sickness because it has the potiential to destroy the length of our lives which is the ultimate goal of health. 

I am not healthy nor sick. I just am. 

I am not separated by walls of discourse and categories that isolate me. I am not perceived as lesser due to my assocation with the weakness that was cancer. 

It's an interesting thought, isn't it?

And how relevant at explaining why I feel the subconcious need to hide the fact I survived cancer from new friends, students, and colleagues. I associate, by ways of moralistic categories, my cancer history as making me lesser. As bad, as frail, as weak. This subconcious reaction to feel shame for sickness originates in the perceived narrative of sickness as bad. Why else do we feel shame for sickness? Why do we feel lesser? Why do so many people run from the reality of sickness when confronted with it? It is because it is seen as BAD. And yes, it is bad in the context of how we see it and experience it. But the sickness itself, the origins of cancer, is just a simple biological cell mutation. That's all it is. But it's distorted into this narrative of evil that by assocation the person with the sickness cannot escape from. How can the cancer be evil and yet the person stay intact from that negative assocation? We can't. Our discourse won't allow it. 

Who wants those associations? Not me. 

Or any cancer patient or survivor, for that matter. We are not sick. We are not lesser, physically or otherwise.

We just are.