There was something about me, before cancer, that I could not love. Not all of me, but something. I must have hated it so much, to create a cancer that required my own mutilation, to demand that a part of me be cut out and thrown away. I don't quite understand it, but somehow I feel its truth. It's like when you have to set the alarm for six in the morning, and you wake up just before the bell rings for you, even though you normally snooze steadily on until seven. The body knows.
— John Robert McFarland, Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole