Musings on the X-Files

Last night I saw the episode of the X-Files in which Scully gets cancer and undergoes radiation and chemo therapy. I was really surprised at how deeply I was affected by watching the radiation treatment. Brought up too many memories of my own six weeks getting blasted by gamma radiation in the hopes that it kill off any cancer cells that remained in my cervical spinal cord (it didn’t – the tumor was back the next year). It’s not that the treatments were that bad overall beyond losing my voice for a month and having a chronically sore throat for ten weeks or so. The memories of that period in my life forced me to take a look at everything I’ve been through because of that cancer, and it was one of those nights when reliving all that makes me sad and so very tired.

One other bit from that episode brought the tears flowing. My mom died about two years ago. She was the driving force in my life, the person who got me through all of the medical crap and other challenges I faced, like the six month battle to get my insurance company to buy me my first wheelchair. (They didn’t, but that’s a rant for another time. When I was 15, she talked me out giving up the fight to carry on the night I lay in the hospital completely paralyzed from the neck down after my second surgery to remove the cancerous tumor that had now moved up and invaded my brainstem. I miss my mom in ways that words cannot describe. It was very, very hard watching Dana Scully’s mom come to her hospital room and give Scully a big hug. My mom died before I could get a flight to Michigan when she was taken to the hospital for the last time, so the last time I got to hug my mom was October 9, 2003, when she visited me and the hubby in our Virgin Islands home.

On a happier X-Files note, I just adore the Lone Gunmen. Sure, they weren’t strong enough to carry an hour show on their own, but their interaction and relationship with Fox Mulder – not to mention they’re the ultimate techno-geeks – was solid gold TV viewing.

Final note on the X-Files. It’s bothered my for a long time that somehow the character formerly known as Cancer Man became known as Cigarette Smoking Man. For a while I was beginning to think that maybe Cancer Man was just a nickname that I had made up but never actually appeared in the show. I finally found some other folks who also remember the name, and saw proof in the show that Cancer Man was the original character name (e.g. tonight’s episode referred to Cancer Man even though the audio from Mulder didn’t say anything more than “our friend”), so instead of thinking I made it up, I’m now pondering about the dramatic change. As is appropriate for a files junkie, I believe the conspiracy theory that says the tobacco industry strong-armed Chris Carter and Fox network execs, possibly even paying the network a bucketful of cash, to make the change so that the show would stop telling the truth about the direct link between cigarettes and cancer. Ironic for a show whose tagline is, “The truth is out there”, dontcha think?

(Written on March 10, 2007)