Facing Esophageal Cancer: A 5% Prognosis #shorts

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Well, the particular form of malignancy I have is in my esophagus.

[00:00:05]But, it's metastasized, as they love to say, um to my lymph nodes.

[00:00:11]Um and the prognosis for that is that if you lump it all together, and you leave out every other consideration, 5% of us live another 5 years. So, that's not ideal. There is, however, I think something specifically terrifying, which I'm trying to oppose in my writing and my appearances, about cancer.

[00:00:30]I I think it's a superstition, one among many. I mean, well, when I was a child, we were all very frightened still by polio.

[00:00:37]And it takes an effort to remember that now. The heart that never gets the right rhythm, bronchitis, TB, all these things. But, none of them have the same, I think, horror as cancer is being allowed to acquire.

[00:00:48]And I think it's probably because of the idea of there being a live thing inside you, a sort of malignant alien, that can't outlive you, but that does, in a sense, have a purpose to its life, which is to kill you and then die. I think I prefer resistance to battling.

[00:01:05]You feel as if you're drowning in passivity and being assaulted by by something that has a horrible persistence that's working on you while you're asleep. It makes me um sober, uh objective. I think, well, uh this is a this is the the best known of our our disease enemies.

[00:01:28]Um I'm one of its many many many victims.

[00:01:31]I'd like to prove to other people that it's not the end of everything to be diagnosed with it.