Cancer Complaints Interrupted by a Great Story
I have been at a loss for words for several days now, and am still finding it hard to find exactly the right thing to say.
Over the weekend, my wonderful wife had arranged for a book reading at the local library. It’s for a book I wrote last year and it has nothing to do with cancer. In fact, it’s about a time when I was indestructible, had a goat-like constitution, and every day was filled with the optimism and certainty that an overabundance of good luck brings.
Instead of indestructible, family members had to read the sections for me this weekend because the advancing prostate cancer has robbed me of my voice.
The book, “Three Cents a Mile,” is a travel memoir about an around-the-world jaunt I took from 1978 to 1980 and all the wonderful people I met on the road. Judging from those who came to the reading, the book is terrific.
The standing room only turnout and the faces in the crowd embarrassingly moved me to tears. Damn (hormone drug) Lupron. One couple flew in from Cincinnati. Some hugged me so hard I had to defend my cancer-infected back. Others whispered heartfelt compliments in my ears.
Many dozens more watched on a Facebook Live channel my niece created, with the most distant viewers in Serbia and Papua New Guinea. I know this sounds like bragging, but the flood of comments online is almost intimidating to begin reading.
In the many photos posted, I am smiling like a goober. And why not? This crowd was primarily made up of my old colleagues in journalism, and that to me was a mark of respect. It may be presumptuous to make that assumption, but I am holding it to my heart.
Finding the right words to say thank you for all of that is daunting, but know that you all made me ridiculously happy for a weekend. I’m still grinning.
I am aware that the turnout was spurred by more than my travel memoir. These folks are also aware of my cancer and its grim prognosis. I wouldn’t say it was a “pity” audience. I like to think that it was the closest someone will get to attending their own wake. And I am delighted with that idea.
The sense of being at a loss for words was also due partly, I suspect, to yet another new drug. I’ve started wearing a fentanyl patch so I get a steady stream of pain killer. We are still tinkering with its dosage and trying to gauge its effect, but it seems to make me dizzy several times a day and may be affecting my focus. My family no longer allows me to drive the car. Part way through long newspaper stories I realize I have lost the thread and just give up. I can still breeze through the Monday crossword puzzles, but can barely dent the tougher Friday ones. And I am increasingly looking to my wife and kids to fill in the word or name I am searching for while talking.
At this point in this blog I have to keep looking back at what I wrote to keep track of where I was going with this. I’ve forgotten how I had intended to wrap this up. It was going to bring the story full circle, but the idea is gone.
Again, I’m at a loss for words.
This is the latest installment in the blog Closing in on -30- about my doctor’s pronouncement that I have about two years to live.
