"What Planet Are You From?"
A question I keep hearing a lot
Truth be told, I may be half-human, half-alien, but I doubt it. But there’s something in my DNA that makes me think that I might be “Human 2.0”, if not “Human 3.0”—I’ll go with the latter; it has a nicer ring to it.
When I underwent my various cancer treatments last year (successfully, and now fully cured), my surgeon, oncologist and various nurses kept asking me, “What planet are you from?”
It started soon after my first surgery when my surgeon came to inspect my “war wounds”. He couldn’t believe how fast I was healing. Then, two weeks into my radiation treatment, they found my cancer had already shrivelled to nothing more than a “rounding error”. Next to exclamations of “unprecedented”, I also kept hearing the usual question about my “home planet”.
Since radiation had already produced “unprecedented” results, chemo was merely a formality. “Remember not to eat or drink anything cold for 48 to 72 hours after each chemo session, because you’ll be extremely sensitive, and it could cause some complications,” I was told. Well, I listened to my body, and I didn’t feel any different or changed after chemo. So, once I’d been unhooked from the chemo tubes, I left, got on a bus and went to eat some ice cream—didn’t faze me at all. In fact, I heartily enjoyed every single scoop.
Again: “Surely, you’re not from this planet, are you?”
To cut a long story short, I completed both radiation and chemo with zero side-effects: never felt nauseous, tired, sensitive to cold, nor did I lose my hair.
Now that I enjoy life again post-cancer, but without a colon, I have discovered that my stomach—clearly, with a mind of its own—has adapted to the new normal, and seems more than capable of processing and digesting foods that a person with a stoma, supposedly, cannot eat anymore, according to medical science.
“Can you point out your planet on a map?”
Years ago, I had a wisdom tooth pulled. The dentist stuffed my mouth with gauze and told me that the wound would stop bleeding after a day or so. By the time I left his office, waited for and took the elevator, and finally emerged from the building, the wound had already closed. I removed the gauze and tossed it in the garbage. An hour later, back in my apartment, I ate a delightful meal—no blood or discomfort.
Speaking of eating, this brings me to my next “Human 3.0” superpower. My metabolism is a highly reliable “employee” of mine, and also works as fast as a speedster—like The Flash. I never gain weight. I love sugar, and eat loads of it, but tests always come back as perfectly normal. To give you an idea: I add extra sugar even to the sweetest treats, such as ice cream or even whipped cream. I am satisfied only once I can hear the crunch-crunch of the sugar between my teeth. Same thing for salt—and again, I need to hear the crunch-crunch. And, of course, I love greasy food. Heck, if I lived in Scotland, I’d eat fried Mars bars every day, several times a day.
My cholesterol and other levels are always textbook-perfect.
We are often told, by those who are supposed to know better than the rest of us, that we should sleep eight hours a day. I tried it, honestly, I did. But if I sleep eight hours, I wake up feeling completely shattered and “broken”, and the day is pretty much a write-off.
Three to four hours of sleep? Bliss! And I am ready to go for another 24 to 36 hours before adopting a horizontal position again.
Sure, I wrote the above lines and paragraphs to impress you with my superpowers, but also to reveal something important: medical science isn’t “science” per se, but trial and error—or witchcraft. No doctor knows what will work, and what won’t. Some people undergo chemo, but cancer kills them anyway. Others experience tremendous problems during chemo, enough to make them lose the will to live. Humans 3.0, like me, take the treatments in stride, call chemo sessions “Happy Hour”, and go on with their lives.
I should also mention that both my surgeon and my oncologist, as well as a few other healthcare professionals attending to me, suggested that my cancer might have been caused by the COVID vaccine. But proving that is next to impossible, they added.
The irony! There I was, going 35 years without seeing any medical professional and never being sick, including during the pandemic, only to be nearly felled by an experimental and too-quick-to-market vaccine that I really didn’t need, but took in order to protect my civil liberties. As we were told, you take your two shots of the stuff, or you won’t be allowed into any restaurants, malls, and other public spaces.
My metabolism isn’t my only “super-employee”; my immune system is one also. It fends off everything, probably also bullets (except for silver bullets, perhaps). But it seems that I violated my reliable ally and poked a hole into its shield by agreeing to the COVID vaccine. Too bad no one will ever know for sure, but I do. So, never again! Besides, people whose number is easily equal to the population figures of several middling and larger countries regularly succumb to COVID to this very day, despite having had a dozen shots of the vaccine.
Remember when medical scientists told the world to cut back on their salt intake? Two years or so later, they reversed their advice after seeing a marked increase in heart problems in people who had reduced their consumption of salt. A few years after that, they reversed it again… that’s the kind of yo-yo you’ll see all the time, because it’s all just trial and error and guesswork, but not “science”.
As for my favourite sport, eating, I long ago adopted a key principle: eat anything that tastes good, and it’ll be good for you; eat anything you don’t like or that makes you gag, and your days are numbered.
Always listen to your body: when it craves X, make sure to grab some X as soon as possible. There is a reason why it’s calling for X, so don’t ignore the incoming message!
Before I go, let me tell you how I answer the question about my “home planet”. I raise my hand, spread my fingers, and say, “Dif-tor heh smusma,” or “Live long and prosper.” Anything else would be highly illogical.
Werner Patels is a translator, editor and writer in Quebec City.