The little c

I worked for the American Cancer Society in Spokane for a couple of years in the late ‘70s. It was a good job, and for a layperson I learned a lot about cancer. I left to go back to graduate school in English, but I could have seen myself staying there for a career.

Back then, not that long ago, cancer was still mostly a taboo subject. People tended to keep it secret. In obituaries, people died of “a lingering illness.” Even patients themselves were kept in the dark if their doctor or family didn’t think they could handle the news. It’s amazing to think that people could go through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy and the doctor would never tell them they had cancer, but it happened rather often. Didn’t they suspect?

That began to change slowly in 1969 when Elizabeth Kubler-Ross published On Death and Dying, still a book worth reading today, even if you’re not. Journalist Betty Rollin opened the door further to the general public in 1976 with First, You Cry, her personal account of breast cancer.

Today, in contrast, it seems like the first thing anybody does after a cancer diagnosis is call their agent: I Am Lance Armstrong’s Malignant Testicle! I have a book by comedian Robert Schimmel called Cancer On Five Dollars a Day, his account of his fight against lymphoma. Amazingly, it's funny.

All of these personal narratives seem to have the same theme, which is that you have to be positive and have a good attitude about your cancer. You have to “survive.” Failure (that would be death) is not an option. Wear an ugly pink plastic thing on your wrist. Walk/run for the cure.

It’s enough to make your hair fall out, but who am I not to join the parade? Last week I got my biopsy results back and I have early stage prostate cancer. This is way better than most cancers but worse, say, than getting a tooth pulled or the hernia surgery I had a year and a half ago. Although actually, the hernia was uncomfortable and then painful, and I had to wait five weeks to get surgery because of the surgeon’s busy schedule. Prostate cancer is asymptomatic, (it doesn’t hurt), and I’m waiting until winter to schedule a few days in the hospital because why ruin a good motorcycle riding season, plus I have some concert tickets and I don’t want to miss any concerts: Taj Mahal. Joe Cocker. Wynton Marsallis, even. I saw Return to Forever last week, and what a band! I was never big on jazz fusion, but these are four of the great jazz musicians of our generation, and it was an electrifying concert. (Pun way too obvious.)

Anyway, despite my professional past and also my father died of prostate cancer, I’m finding I know very little about this disease, and some of what I know is wrong.

That’s enough for now, but I’ll post more from time to time because what else is new? I can only post so much about the utter moral corruption of the Bush administration. Every day in the paper is a new outrage, but it has become so commonplace it usually only makes page two or three. Dennis Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment, which will never go anywhere, but Marie Cocco wrote a column about it and said it was a stunning indictment of “the current occupant,” as Garrison Keillor calls him. I don’t think it’s at all hysterical to talk about a war crimes trial, but don’t wait around for that, either.

My prostate I can do something about, and suddenly I have lots to learn and think about. It’s like a new hobby. You can get a t-shirt. For my guy friends, I hope you’re getting an annual PSA test. One in six men will get prostate cancer, and it’s completely curable if it’s caught early.

(This isn’t actually true, but get a PSA test anyway.)