Do you know that I have a bar code? Yep, I have a little slip of paper with a bar code, and rather than telling a clerk that I've arrived for my radiation appointments, I just scan my bar code. Then wait and the radiation technicians come and get me for my quick, efficient and streamlined irradiation.
We've moved light years passed Henry Ford's first assembly line to bring his cars to the masses. Whether you know it or not, everything you have is made in a factory - including the food that you eat. It has struck me more than once, that I'm very much like the little piggies that get moved from pen to pen in their specialized swine housing, the little piggie factories. And, just like the unease that happens when you think (well, at least when I think) of animals being treated as parts of such an industrialized process, I'm not that comfortable thinking of myself as part of the cancer factory.
See the picture below? Is that what you thought a pig farm looked like?
Just like the guidelines on how to house little piggies, treat them humanely, feed them so they grow quickly, manage all that manure, treat them so they don't get sick, there are written guidelines and protocols about how to treat my type of cancer, surgery, radiation, management of side effects. Now, one certainly hopes the goals are very different - rather than fattening me up for slaughter (although I've done a good job of that all by myself!), the goal is to eradicate the cancer and keep me around a lot longer.
But the means to the goals, the search for efficiencies drives to the same process. For the piggies, the protocols and guidelines strive to most cost effectively manage their short little lives, and convert them from wee little Babe like piglets into pork. For cancer patients, it is to rid the patient of the cancer, as quickly as possible. So many people are so often surprised to learn about where we get our food from, I often encounter folks who had no idea that their idealized vision of meat production belongs to a different century.
With millions of people to feed, efficiency and cost savings are king. It only makes sense that with thousands of people to treat for cancer (is it millions in Canada - interesting question that!), we have a assembly line approach to treatment. When I'm in a happy mood, I like to think of it as a cancer village. But, then sometimes I feel like a cog, just a barcode in a huge industrial complex.
In so many ways, as a society, we have progressed so far. But all this information and specialization drives us away from being personally connected. As organizations become larger and larger, they need to weed out inefficiencies wherever and whenever possible. I know that I am a series of statistics and numbers to my radiation doctor. I'm a T1N0M0 with a 3mm margin.
Don't get me wrong, everyone at the cancer centre is great - they are kind, interested, polite, engaged and efficient. But sometimes I think it would be nice for my Doctor to pause for a moment, and say hello to me. Not to T1N0M0, lateral tongue resection.
On a sidenote - when I think of assembly lines, I always think of the famous I Love Lucy episode, which I included because I love it so much even though it has really very little to do with the blog.
And, if the whole factory farming bit bothered you, one of the easiest and best things you can do to encourage the more humane treatment of animals is to stop buying cheap eggs! Free run or Nest Laid eggs are easy to find, and each and every time someone spends the extra dollar on those eggs, they send a message to the industry that people do care about how animals are treated. More on that later!