I hate cancer

That's so ridiculous to say; it's not like anyone likes cancer. But it's all I can think of to describe what I'm feeling right now.

I've mostly overcome my own resentment about what cancer did to me, though that hollow ache will probably be with me for the rest of my life. But just because my cancer is gone, hopefully never to return, it doesn't mean all is well. Cancer is still out there hurting so many people. So many people aren't anywhere near as lucky as me.

All that happened to me was infertility. Look what happened to this family:

Susan [Torres] had first developed melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, as a teenager in Houston, but had been cancer-free for nearly nine years.

So when Susan began to have headaches and nausea early last month, Torres says, there was no reason to suspect it was anything more than the miseries of early pregnancy. On May 6, the couple made an emergency room visit, where Susan was rehydrated, fed some bland crackers and sent home to rest.

The next night, while he was feeding Susan, "she just stopped," Torres says. Using techniques he had learned as a lifeguard, Torres restarted his wife's breathing. Emergency medical technicians arrived in minutes. Four hours later, a still-dazed Torres was standing outside an operating room and hearing from a neurosurgeon that cancer had invaded Susan's brain.

A day after, when it was clear Susan had survived surgery, Torres faced an agonizing choice: keeping his wife on life support, with a slim chance of producing a live though perhaps disabled baby, or allowing her to die.

Unspoken, but hovering like a cloud: Picking the first option would be hugely costly. He'd be ground down by unimaginable debt. The couple has health insurance but expects it will cover only a fraction of the cost, currently running at least $7,500 a day, he says.

It's just so horrible...and it's scary, too, that her cancer came back after 9 whole years.

I hate cancer. I just hate it.