NOTE : This is an AI piece for obvious reasons. I will state where AI begins.
I don’t have cancer. Many of my family members have had cancer and passed away from it. Many have also survived the painful vines of the disease. However, as you may know, I am a smoker. . . I have been for the past five years, heavily and continuously. It’s only this year that I took many steps away from the cigarette and opted for nicotine pouches which are like smoking five cigarettes at once, anxiety wise.
The one thing everyone will tell you about cigarettes and alcohol is that they cause cancer. Often, this illness, for many of us, regardless of those who have passed, seems like a far off disease. Something that only comes when you are the heaviest of substance abusers. The truth is, it can come at any point. After I read “When breath becomes air” I realised that even non-smokers can get cancer. However, in the book, and with most of those who describe cancer, they rarely explain what it feels like. I can only imagine that the pain must be too much to recount to anyone especially as you’re going through it. What most people see is the stuff that often is affiliated with the substances such as throwing up, losing hair, breathlessness and sharp pangs of pain.
I lived with my uncle as he was going cancer treatment and what changed is that he was oddly quiet. I couldn’t tell that he was in pain but I knew that he was. What i knew and what i saw weren’t really locking together in my head. May Uncle Cornelius rest in eternal peace. 🕊️
Today morning, I asked AI to describe what cancer pain feels like. Lately, it’s been creeping in my thoughts and I choose to ask AI what it feels like in a way that I could understand, bringing images to light from words of pain described. . . for those who think in pictures.
Below is what AI described cancer pain as. No. This is not satirical.
If you would like to get off smoking cigarettes, try nicotine gum nicorette or ask a doctor to prescribe you Zyban. It’s helped me slow down and take away the craving.
Kind regards,
Adikinyi.
What Cancer Pain Feels Like.
A descriptive portrait in similes
Cancer pain is not one thing. It depends on where the disease is, what it is pressing against, and what the treatment is doing to the body. Some people have very little pain; for others it changes by the hour. What follows is a composite of the ways people commonly describe it.
The Deep Bone Ache
It sits deep, like a toothache that has migrated into the longest bones of the body. It can feel like a rusted bolt being turned, a quarter-turn at a time, inside the thigh or the spine. There is often a grinding quality, as though sand has been poured into a hinge. It is steady and dull, like the hum of a fridge you can’t switch off, and it tends to swell at night, like a tide that rolls in once the house goes quiet.
Nerve Pain
This is the pain of a live wire laid against bare skin. It arrives as sudden electric jolts, like touching a frayed lamp cord, or as a burning that feels like sunburn extending all the way down to the muscle. Some describe pins and needles, like a foot waking from sleep that never finishes waking. Others feel as if they are wearing gloves lined with crushed glass, or as if a stove ring has been left glowing just under the skin.
Organ Pain
Pain from inside the abdomen or chest is hard to point to. It can feel like a fist slowly closing around something within you, or like a swallowed stone lodged where it should not be. It can gnaw like a hungry animal, or cramp like a wet towel being wrung out by strong hands. Sometimes it shows up far from its source, like a radio signal arriving faintly from the wrong room.
Pressure Pain
When a tumour presses on its surroundings, the pain is one of tightness and fullness. It can feel like a band cinched around the ribs, or a heavy book resting on the chest that never gets lifted. It can feel like wearing a belt three notches too small, day and night, or, inside the head, like a balloon being inflated against the inside of the skull.
Breakthrough Pain
This is the pain that arrives out of nowhere on an otherwise manageable day. It is like a thunderclap on a day that was only overcast, or a match struck in a pitch-dark room. It peaks within minutes, like a wave breaking over a swimmer who had been floating calmly, and then it recedes, leaving the person breathless and wary of the next one.
Pain From Treatment
Treatment brings its own kinds of hurt. Chemotherapy can leave the body aching like the worst flu, with joints stiff as unoiled hinges. Mouth sores can feel as though scalding tea has been sipped over and over. Radiation can leave skin raw, like a sunburn from a merciless sun. After surgery, the scar can feel like a seam pulled too tight, or a zip catching on the same stubborn thread with every movement.
The Background Hum
Beneath the sharper pains there is often a constant weight, a blend of ache and exhaustion. It is like carrying a rucksack of wet sand everywhere, or wading through deep water while everyone else walks on dry land. It is like a phone stuck at two percent battery, never quite dying and never truly charging.
The Weight of Fear
Pain in cancer rarely arrives alone. It comes carrying questions: is this the disease? is it growing? Fear acts like a storm cloud over a field that is already flooded, making every twinge louder. Each sensation is read like a message from the body, and the reading itself is tiring.
A Closing Note
Pain is real, it is common, and it is very often treatable. Anyone experiencing it should tell their care team plainly and early. Pain control is a core part of cancer care, and asking for it is never weakness.