It makes me realize that the world is divided not between rich and poor, or male and female, or East and West, but between those who like spicy food and those who do not.
The evening last summer when I made the chili for my partner and our families was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Everybody got on great, united by their imprecations against the cook. Later that night, though, I woke with a fluttering in my chest. I put my hand over my heart and thought of my uncle who'd died at 34 of heart disease.
When I went to see the doctor, she gave me an EKG. "Your heart is fine," she told me. What I was feeling was probably heartburn caused by the spicy chili I'd made. "But let's get you a chest X-ray, just in case."
And there it was: a two-inch spot over my lung, the earliest stage of a malignant tumor. I've never smoked, so I never would have been checked for this. By the time I developed symptoms it would have been too late: 85 percent of people diagnosed with lung cancer die within six months.
Cancer is what happens when some part of ourselves wants to live forever. The body is more a confederation of cells agreeing to act in concert than a single organism. When a cell refuses to die and transmits that obdurate life force to its neighbors, we get cancer—death brought on by the striving for immortality.
As I said, I'm not trying to live forever. But because of the gastric reverberations my chili produced on that night last summer, the cancer was detected early; I had surgery. And now I live to tell the tale.- More Here
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