Rock/Paper/Scissors

I'm one of those people who generally doesn't remember their dreams.  But not in this case.  In this one, The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) is the boss of my company (business undefined or unimportant).  He comes into the conference room to explain to a small group of us that he has cancer.  He struggles with the revelation to us (though he seems resigned to the diagnosis), but can't seem to come out with the words.  And as I'm realizing what it is he is wrestling with (word choice intended), in the dream I'm thinking to myself, "how does a guy/physique like The Rock get cancer?"  Steroid controversy (or NOT) aside, he seems like a very healthy guy whose life and style and lifestyle seem more about the pure power of Samoan bloodlines (thank you "Moana") and less about chemicals, diet soda, cigarettes or other ingestible carcinogens.

To set the record straight, The Rock does NOT have cancer (to my knowledge).  But anyone, igneous or otherwise, can fall victim to the indiscriminate calling of cancer.  I am now going to quote/borrow liberally from a paper presented by my Oncologist on the statistical logic/randomness of the origins and causes of cancer.  Admittedly, it's pretty heady stuff (come on, I'm not a doctor - I just play one at work) but the gist of it is this: with all that is going on metabolically in our bodies on a daily basis, it's nothing short of a miracle that we ALL don't have cancer.  Consider the following - and I'll be back after that with a wrap-up.

We must make 500 billion new blood cells each day to survive  . . .  There are tens of millions of bone marrow genetic mutations per second occurring in each of us . . .  Any single cell gone bad can do harm, but no single cell is essential, so we have mechanisms to get rid of nearly any cell that has even a hint of a problem . . .  On rare occasions random changes in the bone marrow cells can result in significant changes that result in the development of a blood cell cancer . . .  The biological processes that make us human have error rates that distribute illness on a no-fault basis.

My conclusion:  In life, like the game of rock/paper/scissors, seemingly arbitrary events can cause one thing to conquer another.  In general our bodies work right and we dodge the almost random ravages of cancer (contributing lifestyle choices aside).  But if you think about what IS going on every second inside this amazing machine known as our body, and you ponder the hypothesis of Dr S (a learned and informed man), then all I can offer is that "shit happens" and we're all going to have to learn to live with it if god-forbid our number gets called.  Trust me - you can handle it.