In this essay, the experiences of the author serve as a key to a critical understanding of medicalization in the treatment of cancer in American society. Forms of medicalization described are (a) giving useless treatments to keep the patient under medical care; (b) demeaning and undermining efforts at self-determination and self-care; and (c) keeping the patient's life suspended by continual reminders that death is just around the corner, and that all time and energy left must be devoted to ferreting out and killing the disease.