Challenge #02567-G010: Assumptive Dread
Humans are not great because of what most people think. It’s not our physical capabilities or our ingenuity, not even or pack-bonding skills. It’s our heartiness and our healing ability that is boosted though the advancement of medical applications. Humans figured multiple ways how to rewrite our genetics codes before we had proper space travel, we were able to eradicate deadly diseases off the face of the planet. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if we created the prototype livesuit. But there always one thing that we’re unable to cure. When you hear the news it hit hard. When a disease is perfectly attuned to your body and you tried to cure it, you’re basically asking someone to mangle your body to have a chance to survive. Cancer is humanity's greatest rival. -- Anon Guest
Humans have a reputation for being unstoppable, and part of that is their ability to bounce back from injuries that other species would consider fatal. The other is their resilient immune system, their kill-or-cure biological strategies that sometimes come close to the first option, then the Human in question manages to pull through.
It's not perfect. Nothing ever is. The Human immune system can turn against itself, cannibalising otherwise perfectly functional body parts, sometimes destroying the Human in the process. Sometimes, it creates more material at random, growing bone where there was once muscle. Sometimes it just eats the body a little at a time. The other way it can go is growing new cells with amazing rapidity. Those clusters of cells take resources from the rest of the Human suffering from their growth and, eventually, starve the entire being to death.
Humans have been trying to stop things like this happening since they realised what those things actually were. Early attempts - including divine intervention and rudimentary yet impossible magic - were not effective. Later therapies were hit and miss until their medicine figured out some precision. For the most part, for centuries at a time, Humans relied on a mixture of highly dangerous medical treatments and equally dangerous surgeries to rid themselves of the anomalous cell clusters. When it comes to "kill or cure", Humans really commit.
They call it 'cancer' when the cells grow beyond control, and it has become metaphor for the worst in any and all things. Until the perfection of autotargeting nanomachines, Humanity's prime methods of treatment were combinations of cutting parts of their own bodies out and hoping for the best, or treatments so harsh that they nearly killed the patient in the process. Some pockets of Humanity gengineered themselves so that they would become cancer-resistant, but the results were both dubious and varied.
As for the cancers that could be vaccinated against, there were astonishing and moral arguments against doing that that hindered cancer research for centuries. Mostly because of morals drawn from texts written millennia before the invention of science. Some were because of unfounded fears concerning the process itself. Fears that formed during the invention of vaccines and still will not be quelled.
Only Humanity would consider a heavily gengineered assistance virus like the immunoflu to be 'more natural' than the far safer introduction of virii particles into the bloodstream so that the immune system can prepare in advance for the real thing. Their illogic is labyrinthine, confounding, and beyond many cogniscents' understanding.
With such a history of horror in their medicine, it's no shock to have Humans being horrified when they find they have a cancer. This is especially common in those new to the Galactic Alliance or otherwise untrusting of alien technology. Medik Skorj found it relatively easy to tell which ones those were. They always had the same first question as they nervously perched on the bioscanner.
"You're not going to probe me, are you?"
This was where a quick briefing of informed consent blended with basic cogniscent rights proved to be most efficacious. Besides, medical diagnostics in the Alliance generally performed passively, collecting any signals the body let out during the process of functioning. Haemanalysis and other diagnostics only required an active scan. Explaining how things worked before applying them always helped.
In this case, the briefing was, "I will not do a single thing to you without your express consent. You have the right to refuse any tests and procedures without the need for explanation. If you lie down on the bed, it will read your life signals. This is a passive scan and does not use any radiation."
Of course, the stress readouts were high, but Medik Skorj had already changed the alarms to pleasantly musical chirps, which were sufficient to calm the patient.
Humans liked blinking lights and musical chirps from their machinery. Skorj, with a far more sensitive ear for the subtle differences in tone, could tell when the patient was relaxed enough for accurate diagnosis. Skorj remembered to keep the cheerful, calming veneer over everything ze said and did.
"The scanners have found something interesting," Skorj singsonged. "I would like to run a haemanalysis scan to be certain that it won't be anything worrying--"
"It's cancer, isn't it?" said the nervous Human. "It's cancer and I'm going to die. Just skip to the part where you tell me how long I've got, okay?"
Ah. One of those. The Human was going to spend most of the session over-concerning themselves about getting their affairs in order. "You may have your entire life," singsonged Skorj, "that being, an expected longevity. First, I will need to place this," ze showed the Human a Haemanalysis scanner, "next to a vein. It will use small amounts of light to look at your blood and detect anamolies... strange parts within. Once I have that information, I shall be able to explain the next step."
The nervous Human was convinced that they were going to die earlier than expected, and spent most of the diagnostic section of the appointment fussing about how they were going to tie up the remains of their life in a neat little bow.
They were most shocked when they learned that a pinch of small robots could remove the cancerous cells with no further harm.
"That's it? I get a needle in my arm or I swallow a pill and I get to live?"
"Yes. Those are your choices. The nanomachines can be administered orally or intravenously." Skorj decided not to show this Human what they looked like under an electron microscope. Explaining it in the format of lies-to-children. "Think of them like a family of helpful ants. They think your cancer cells are sugar, so they go all through your body and find every single bit of cancer and eat it."
"And they won't make a nest inside me?"
Okay. That was a new one... "What happens to an ants' nest when there's no more food?"
"It dies ou-- oh." Now they laughed. Finally. Once a Human started laughing, then there was less to worry about. Most of the time. "So once the cancer's all gone, the little bots go, too."
"Out with the rest of the bodily waste," chirped Skorj. "Would you like the pill or the needle?"
"I'll take the pill, thankyou."
The Human insisted on weekly check-ups afterwards to see how their "little ants" were doing. A process that revealed the Human was giving them all pep talks every morning.
Humans. Even when they were misinformed, they had their moments.
[AN: I don't know how it happened, but I used today's prompt out of order. Apologies to all for the inconvenience.]
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Kateryna_Kon]
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I liked this one a lot :-) My dad's very sick. And cancer runs in my family. I wish things like this existed in real life.
Same, friendo. Same.
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