But I am a notoriously bad shopper, both online and off. Perhaps some of you readers can assist correspondents who have asked me about lymphedema wraps that don’t look like bandages, bras for one breast, and footwear for feet with chemo-related neuropathies.

Stymied at finding camouflage, I started to wonder: Whom am I trying to kid? The idea of delusional sartorial pride brought to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee probably did not consider this tale when he composed his influential book about cancer, “The Emperor of All Maladies,” but it seemed somehow pertinent to my perplexity.

The swindlers in Andersen’s tale claim to weave fine fabrics that, they say, will be invisible to onlookers unfit for public office. Government officials and then the emperor himself praise the nonexistent outfits because they don’t want to appear incompetent. As the naked leader parades himself in the illusionary finery, one child and then the townspeople realize that “he hasn’t got anything on.” Still, the monarch continues to strut about while his obsequious attendants bow down to gather up the royal train that is not there.

Andersen satirizes the deceptions of hypocritical politicians and those who kowtow to them, even as he suggests that their charades may not be halted by truth-tellers: a timely admonition.

However, I take away a humbler point, namely the powerful protection of visible, palpable costumes. Neither the emperor nor the emperor of all maladies has inspired the creation of new wardrobes. Andersen’s vain monarch and his sycophants refuse to admit that no apparel has been created for him, but many patients know that designers and manufacturers haven’t found it profitable to outfit us in widely advertised or available garments.

With our concavities and bulges, scars and bags, prostheses and appliances, skin sensitivities and problems handling buttons, men and women coping with cancer comprehend all too well how we look unclothed. Undergoing recurrent physical exams, we experience what it means to be exposed and embodied … maybe more than healthy people do. Manufacturers of maternity clothes who once hid pregnant bodies under huge tents now embrace the chance to showcase the bump. But cancer patients rarely want to flaunt our changing bodies, and the apparel industry tends to keep its distance. Even the gift shop in my cancer center sells mainly candy, soda and color-coded bracelets.

Fully cognizant that cover-ups are just that, I nevertheless need some help heeding Elizabeth Bishop’s sardonic injunction to an avatar of herself, the hairless and sick animal in her poem Pink Dog: “Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival!”