Posts Tagged ‘cancer’
All Unhappy Families are Alike
September 4, 2014
In commenting on my latest essay for “Good Letters,” a man “disabled from an odd condition” confided that, when his health crashed, he found himself abandoned by those he depended upon: “My family avoided me thinking that I represented their destiny.” Years later “they still do,” he added. Not everyone who lives with advancing death…
Read MoreHow to Talk to the Dying
August 22, 2014
Since being diagnosed nearly seven years ago with a lethal cancer, I have backed my old friends and new acquaintances into a quandary. What do you say to a dying man? Strangers don’t seem to have any difficulty. Now that chemotherapy has reduced me to a tattered coat upon a stick, I am routinely praised,…
Read MoreThe Destruction of a Man
July 31, 2014
This year 233,000 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, while almost the same number of American women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. What breast cancer is for women prostate cancer is for men. And yet the funding of prostate cancer research is less than half that for breast cancer. In 2012,…
Read MoreQuitting the Cancer Battle
July 8, 2014
I am not a hero. After my last post, some readers wanted to know how I arrived at my attitude toward cancer, which is to be found somewhere between a religious person’s submission and the cordial host’s welcome. A better question—one my oncologist and I wrestle with at every appointment—is why most cancer patients tumble…
Read MoreThe Mercy of Sickness before Death
June 18, 2014
Just so you understand: I am dying. I am in the end stage of metastatic prostate cancer, and after six-and-a-half years of close association with the disease, I have another six months to two years to live. That probably sounds exhibitionistic, but I don’t mean it to. Nor am I fishing for pity. Truth is,…
Read MoreFor All the Saints
November 2, 2011
When I was growing up in the Catholic Church, November 1st was a Holy Day. All Saints Day, they called it. Aside from the obligatory Mass I attended, it was a day to stop, to take time out of our busy lives to remember, to pray for, and to be thankful for all the saints…
Read More