Cancer will scar you in one way or another.  It may scar your body.  Or it can scar your soul.  Roughly one out of four people die from cancer.  And roughly 50% will fight or develop some form of cancer in their lifetime.

For many, fighting cancer becomes a battle … a battle that changes us.  Fighting cancer can make you gain new perspective and find a better appreciation of life, but it also damages and kills.  It can provide both a beautiful perspective and horrible fear and pain.

I’ve often thought that the visual damage that cancer causes provides an accurate physical depiction of what cancer can do to our psyches.  It can distort us, it removes pieces of our life, it can render us feeling less than whole.  And the cuts are hardly ever neat and clean.  Cancer is feisty, unruly and unempathetic.  Cancer is an enemy of health.

This is what cancer looks like:

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From IMGUR: “Done in February to remove my pelvic lymph nodes and appendix to run further tests on to see if the cancer had spread. You can see the incision runs about an inch short of the previous incision. This time I had 29 staples, instead of 37.”

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From IMGUR: “Today, I am officially 10 years cancer free! Here is a before and after photo to show how far I’ve come. Kicking cancer’s ass 10 years and counting!”

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Via Mirror UK: The scars on Andre’s head after he underwent surgery for a brain tumor.  A tumor that would eventually take his life.

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This incredible story and photo and comes from Huffington Post.

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From Deviant Art : “This was from a bone transplant that removed a cancerous bone tumor over two years ago, another year of chemotherapy and radiation followed. I’ve been in remission since Christmas 2010. I felt like a Warrior since. ”

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This is from the photo documentary by Renée C. Byer called, “A Mother’s Journey”.  A Mother’s Journey” was a series of photos, over the course of a year, about a boy at the age of 10 who was battling cancer.

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Scars from mouth cancer.

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From IMGUR: Most people hide them, but I love my scar because it means that I fought cancer and WON.