Medical Anthropology ForumDying Would Have Been Easier: Surviving Cancer, Learning to Live With and After Cancer

A few weeks before her sister's 43rd birthday and Karin Polit's 40th, her sister discovered a lumpy infection on one of her breasts. The gynecologist who examined her insisted that she be admitted to the hospital immediately and have surgery as soon as possible. It turned out that she had a fast growing mamacarcinoma that was growing so fast that they had to fear for her life. The affected breast was amputated immediately and the doctors started talking to her quite quickly about chemotherapy and radiation. She always talked about how they had put her on a train that was then running. She was comfortable with it, the speaker was not. In this lecture, Karin Polit will analyze her sister's and her own experiences with the German medical system during and after her sister's cancer treatment, relate them to research she did in the following years as an acting patient for the Heidelberg University Hospital, and discuss them on the basis of recent theories of medical anthropology.