On a cold January morning, somewhere above the Atlantic, a nurse quietly draws a vial of blood from the President of the United States. The world sees the speeches, the summits, but not this. Not the routine hum of machines tracking one man’s every cell as if the planet depended on it. Because, in many ways, it does.
No one is more shielded, more tracked, or more medically monitored than the President of the United States. He is not merely a leader, he is an institution. A node in a global system whose health, both political and physical ,can tip markets, shape diplomacy, and ripple across every time zone.
So when news broke that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, a stage where the disease has already breached the body’s frontlines, the silence was deafening. For those who understand the protocols surrounding a sitting U.S. president, the weekly blood panels, the daily urine cultures, the mobile bank of compatible blood that travels with him, even the organs quietly prepared for transplant, it simply didn’t add up.
This wasn’t a sudden diagnosis. It was, almost certainly, a revelation long delayed.
And that’s okay.
Because we understand.
We understand that health, even in public office, is still deeply private. We understand that disclosing a terminal or aggressive illness is not just a medical decision, but a national one, one that must weigh transparency against stability, vulnerability against duty.
But make no mistake. if Joe Biden has been leading the world’s most powerful nation while privately battling Stage 4 cancer, then what he’s done is not only courageous,it is monumental.
It begs the question. Do we elect men or myths? In a culture that mistakes disclosure for weakness, perhaps our leaders have learned to suffer silently. We don’t just demand strength,we demand the illusion of invincibility. And so, when illness appears, it threatens more than the man. It threatens the image.
The truth, though, is complicated.
There were murmurs. A whisper campaign, some say, of a quiet transition, an orchestrated ascent for America’s first Black woman president, just months into a second Biden term. A narrative built on noble ideals, yes, but one that grew too sharp, too cold. Too calculated. Even for the most stoic Democrat or the most visionary feminist, it became too much to stomach.
Because at some point, strategy should still make room for humanity.
And humanity is exactly what this story demands.
Those of us who know about cancer who understand what words like “aggressive” and “metastasized” actually mean, know the road ahead. A Gleason score of 8 to 10 signals a ferocity in the disease. At Stage 4, it has already staked a claim elsewhere in the body. For a man in his eighties, surgery may not be an option. Chemotherapy becomes a blunt tool. The decisions are not just clinical, they’re existential.
But Joe Biden has known pain before.
He lost his first wife and daughter in a car crash that nearly claimed his sons. He raised those boys alone, commuting by train every night just to tuck them in. Later, he buried one of them Beau, the soldier, the rising star, to brain cancer.
These are not the wounds of a career politician. They are the scars of a man who has crawled through grief and still shown up for the world.
So if this diagnosis came years ago, and he chose to fight quietly while carrying the weight of a nation, then we owe him not cynicism, but reverence.
And to Jill Biden, and the family surrounding him with love and steel, we say. We see you. We honor you. We send you the kind of strength that isn’t loud, but steady, the kind that moves mountains in silence.
Franklin D. Roosevelt hid the extent of his paralysis. Mitterrand kept his prostate cancer private for over a decade. In Russia, secrecy is doctrine. In Scandinavia, transparency is sacred. Every nation must answer this. How much of our leaders’ truth can we handle?
Maybe the true cost of power in America is pretending not to bleed.
Because this isn’t a political story.
It’s a human one.
And sometimes, the greatest legacy isn’t power wielded from a podium, but dignity held in the face of decline. Not in the speeches, but in the silences between them.
History may one day record this chapter differently. But today, we simply extend our hands across aisles, across borders, across beliefs and say.
We’re with you, Mr. President.
All the way.
Stephanie Shaakaa
08034861434
