CancerGram

The format available here only shows the 20 most recent posts. The full CancerGram can be read on Instagram at darren_douglas_floyd.

View fullsize Drastic Treatment Drastic Treatment was originally published as a social media essay via darrendouglasfloyd.com and pushed to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook two posts per day between December 25th, 2019 and January 16, 2020. Drastic Treatment Expe
View fullsize Zilch I have nothing. Nothing and no one. The job is gone. The dog is gone. Desire is gone. The PSAs are undetectable, so maybe the cancer is gone. It looks like I will live. They won’t call it remission officially until it has been 5 y
View fullsize Y Chromosome The Y chromosome is the location of a gene desert, prone to the accumulation of junk DNA. It’s a site of degeneration due to its high mutation rate. It’s also the location of the SRY gene, which is responsible for the init
View fullsize Xenium A feast of delicious treats. The snap shot of tools and mechanisms, the debris of production, through which it moves. Not so much a aesthetic program, as a list of ingredients. Content: personal as political, embodied or literally from the
View fullsize Wypipo White people cannot be trusted. Trump won every category of white voter in 2016. Every category. The problem is us and fixing it means changing ourselves. This will be a lot of work and difficult conversations. I’m not talking abou
View fullsize Vegan I am a cancer vegan. A reluctant vegan. An imperfect vegan prone to meat-lapses. Vegan because there is some research that suggests being vegan lowers the chance for cancer to return. I’m not a political vegan or a moral vegan. I&rsqu
View fullsize Urethra They found the tumor in my urethra. Specifically, the part that threads through the prostate. The tumor had grown into the urethra, within the prostate itself. No wonder I was having a hard time eliminating. Luckily, they were able to re
View fullsize Troubling Body I have a troubling body. I don’t know about you, but maybe you have one too. I wasn’t always this way. I ended up here accidentally. I’d like to invite all troubling bodies into this discussion. Any trouble, any bod
View fullsize T The hardest drug I ever took was testosterone. I was hammered on it every day from age 8 to 43. What did it do to me? I don’t really know. I only know what slipped away when the T was gone. The first phase of the impact of ADT was physi
View fullsize Spado spa·do | \ ˈspā(ˌ)dō\ plural spadones\ spāˈdō(ˌ)nēz , spəˈd- \ 1: a castrated man or lower animal 2: an impotent person The population of men I belong to, and seek to study, are chemically or medically castrated. I would like to propo
View fullsize Skoptsy Skop·tsy | \ (ˌ)skäpt¦sē\ Members of an ascetic religious sect of dissenters from the Russian Orthodox Church dating probably from the 18th century and stressing sexual abstinence. The Skoptsy included both men and women.
View fullsize Sexuality There was a time in my life when I thought everything was sex, or about sex. Desire was so pervasive that I couldn’t see outside of it. It’s what everyone wants to be doing, it’s the big economy, right? (A. Brewer, 1999
View fullsize Revolution When I was a young, white, suburban punk growing up under Reagan and Bush, I couldn’t imagine the future. I had been convinced we would all burn in a nuclear fire. Seriously. In 1986, Kirby Puckett signed a baseball contract that
View fullsize Reparations I don’t know how America is supposed to become a more perfect union if we can’t make an honest appraisal of our grosser handicaps. Slavery is our grossest handicap. 400 years of plunder doesn’t go away by pretending i
View fullsize Remission Mini Roses. Moire Sins. Rim Noises. The preferred narrative of cancer. “Are you in remission?” “Cancer always comes back.” No one wants to hear about how you’re not in remission. No one can bear to feel th
View fullsize Queer I don’t know if I am queer. Who gets to be? 1994. Wooster, OH. The only male Women’s Studies major on campus and reveling in the disturbance and confusion it caused. “Is he gay?” “It must be to meet girls.&rdq
View fullsize Pussy Hat My mother knitted them for my brother and I as part of the resistance. Some of the ladies in her knitting group were passing the pattern along among themselves. I wore mine with pride all that winter in Memphis. One of my students asked
View fullsize Prostate Specific Antigen The PSA test is the basic method of diagnosing prostate cancer. It’s a tricky test because it’s not always an accurate predictor of prostate cancer. PSAs are created in the body naturally, not just in the pres
View fullsize Patriarchy During the hearings, after Dr. Blasey Ford had testified, it was as if patriarchy hung on the precipice. Would she be believed? What a simple thing, to topple the long history of privilege. To be believed. Then we saw an extraordinary
View fullsize Old Man Old Man is dead. He passed away comfortably this morning at 11am. Old Man’s chronic kidney disease worsened rapidly in the new year, resulting in an inability to eat, walk or stand. It was time to let him go. We went on good walks.