". . .they had left some of it and it had grown, it had come back, it had laid
eggs, was stowed away, was stuck to the side of the
spaceship. She had seemed good for a while, had done the
chemo, had gotten the wigs, and then her hair had grown back - darker, more brittle. But six months later she began to have pain again. . . they had opened her up - a phrase they used - and had a look inside, it was staring out at them, at the doctors, like a thousand writhing worms under a rock, swarming, shimmering, wet and oily - Good God! - or maybe not like worms but like a million little podules, each a
tiny city of cancer, each with an unruly, sprawling, enviromentally careless citizenry with no
zoning laws whatsoever. When the doctors opened her up , and suddenly there was light thrown upon the world of cancer podules, they were annoyed at the disturbance and defiant. Turn off. The fucking. Lights. They glared at the doctor, each podule, though a city unto itself, having one single eye, one blind evil eye in the middle, which stared imperiously, as only a
blind eye can do, out at the doctor."
Dave Eggers from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius