Just A Cell

Just A Cell

During my second battle with breast cancer, my daughter Lindsey, who was a senior in high school at the time, wrote this amazing essay. 

I was once a cell, just a dull little unit of matter. I lived in the body of a beautiful woman named Andrea Berkowitz. She always did, and does, fuel her body with nutritious care. That makes life a lot easier for me and all of her other organelles. Anyways, my home rests very near to the heart; I was a cell inside her mammary gland.

All I knew in the world was a tiny fraction of my host’s body. My sole job was to exist inside of her; I made no difference to her or anybody’s life. Sometimes, it was wonderful. Simplicity was all I needed to be content. Though, sometimes, it grew wearisome. Spending my days with no mission to conquer made me feel useless, but I guess it had its pros and cons. That stage of my life lasted for 42 years, take some or leave some.

The first time I noticed that my life was finally changing was utterly bemusing. I felt wildly different, as though my solid structure was deteriorating. My roots seemed to have been rearranged, or even modified completely. Slowly but surely, this deterioration progressed. I often wondered why everything was occurring and what it meant for my host. Was it a good change? Was I doing something meaningful for her? Or was I harming her?

Day by day, I began to feel more and more abnormal. My body was constantly being yanked in all directions; the circular structure I once had was remodeled by an unknown source. My shape could solely be described as erratic. Soon enough, my erratic body was ripped in half.  There were two of me. We were stuck together in an undetectable clump. For some time, this is how things remained. During that period, I discovered a newfound rage that I had never felt before. This rage became too overpowering for my own strength; next thing I knew there were four of me.

One day, I was living lavishly as I always did when I began to feel an intense pressure. Unlike previously, I was being squished and flattened against my will. It was coming from the exterior of Andrea’s body, like somebody was squeezing me. I’m not even sure that it was a “somebody;” I don’t believe a human is capable of producing such a powerful force. I became paper thin for a matter of minutes then returned back to my deformed state. After that brief experience, I only continued to duplicate; nothing came from the strange flattening situation. Months passed by and my body continued to be ripped in half. More and more little nameless shapes began to appear and chunk together. I was beginning to worry that something was wrong. If only there was a way for me to communicate with Andrea.

In September of 2013, she started to investigate. She was feeling the region where I live with her hands, as I prominently felt her fingers dig into me. I was violently curious about the occurrences on the exterior of my confined living space, but there was no way for me to know. It was just a matter of time. I waited, and waited, and waited.

Weeks went by as many more sensations pulsed through me. Various hands, machines, and tools were constantly jabbing my home that was once untouched. With this chaos came my final exposition to something I’ve never experienced before; I was beginning to see the outside. My host had been cut open and I was face to face with the light of day.

A strange man with sharp pointy objects grabbed me and yanked me out of Andrea. I guess my transformations were indeed abnormal after all. I watched from the outside as the man poked at Andreas' body, as though he was searching for something more. It turns out that he was. I saw him dig inside her breasts and tear all of its remnants out of her. He even ventured to a different body part; I heard him use the term “lymph nodes” to describe it.

As I floated in a vat, the man pulled out more substances from said body part that appeared to be the duplicates of my very structure. From a distance, I saw something familiar; it was a dull little unit of matter. It was the structure that I used to consider my own. Was that cell supposed to remain, or was something wrong? Soon enough, they took me away. I was separated from my host and stored in a dark room for the remainder of my life, but I never stopped wondering about the little cell that was left behind.

I, too, was once a cell; just a dull little unit of matter like my neighbor stated. Throughout my time as a breast cell, I watched the majority of my neighbors get ripped out. Some of them looked quite different from me, very jagged and oddly shaped. They were the first ones to be extracted, while all of my identical neighbors followed soon after. They inserted two large sacs of unknown fluid where my neighbors used to live, but I was left behind. It was just me and the two sacs for quite a while.

After the day that I was stranded by my lonesome, I remained in the same state for eight long years. The chaos had ended and I was back to living in my host’s confined body; nothingness was my normality. I had already gotten used to this as my life remained stationary for 42 years prior.

Every six months, after the day I saw the outside, I felt an aggressive pushing and poking feeling. I just assumed it was somebody checking for abnormalities like the ones that occurred in my neighbors. Life was repetitive, to say the least. The mundane nature of my existence, though, quickly came to a halt.

The moment I began to transform, I didn’t stop. It was like all of the energy that I was forced to maintain my entire life was bursting out of my pores. Rapidly, and all at once, my structure grew to be what I saw in my “jagged and oddly shaped” neighbors. They were the ones that were ripped out; was I next? Or did I have a chance to progress further than they did?

This time, I was stronger than the cells that transformed eight years past. Just like that, within what seemed like a minute, one copy of me turned to two. Without time to process, two turned into four. And four into eight. I had an army of my powerful clones behind me as we continued to grow in unison. I felt unstoppable. That was, until the distinct poking feeling arrived much faster than I remembered; it had only been a month.

On the day of March 29th, 2021, I couldn’t avoid being tugged and grabbed. There were fingers being lodged inside me and my clones. My host must have found out. Who knew how long it would be before my spotlight was ripped away from me? How does Andrea always seem to find us?

Nothing happened for a while. I continued to do as I did; my power was not going to be stopped quite yet. But, soon, something long and thin was inserted very near to me. It seemed to connect to a vein. A mysterious liquid was shot out of the tube and straight into Andrea’s system. The liquid made me feel weak, helpless. I was shrinking.

Week by week, more of this toxic fluid drained inside of my host’s body. I began to deteriorate, and the large army of clones that once was cherry-sized began to shed. The liveliness was being sucked straight out of me, leaving me with less and less strength. I did not give up; I held on to the small inkling of power that lived deep inside me. I pushed against the grain in order to exert my dominance. Nothing would make me stop.

And, like I said, I didn’t stop. I fought back and regained control; I began to grow again. My duplicated cells started to split and split some more. I persevered in her breast while the fluid began to lose its effectiveness. The fire inside me was overwhelming. The only thing I knew how to do was let it burn. Weeks went by and I was back to the cherry-sized clump.

My growth soon fell to a plateau; I could tell Andrea was fighting back. I was not a fan of the pulsing competition between me and her; it outraged me. The liquid being injected inside of me began to make me feel different, lesser. This liquid contained much more poison than before; I knew this because I felt weak again. This was when I began to shrink once more. Was this what my life was? A constant dance between growth and decay?

For months, the struggle for power continued to jump between me and Andrea. One week I progressed, the next week she did. Back and forth. Back and forth. Though, after a while, something changed. After pushing against my host for so long, we reached a standstill. We both learned what the other was capable of, resulting in a stagnant battle between us. I was beginning to believe I had no purpose in this world; what else was I to think?

On September 10th, 2021, I was reunited with the light once again. There was a gaping hole in the organ that I called my home. This time, I knew what was going to happen. I saw it happen to my neighbors first hand; it was time. Two long blades cut me out of my lifelong habitat, and I was transported into a vat with the rest of my neighbors. I watched as a woman resealed her body, as though I was never there in the first place. After a few moments of observing the body I lived in for fifty years, I was snatched away, taken to a dark room where I will remain until the end of time.