Posts Tagged ‘disease’
My HIV Test
June 20, 2016
Here’s something I never told my parents: some years ago I got an HIV test. I was working and living at a Catholic Worker house in Phoenix, a place I wound up after college. I had a freshly conferred bachelor’s degree in creative writing (not exactly bait for corporate recruiters) and a swirling head full…
Read MoreThe Beautiful Miracle of Our Fragility
February 10, 2016
While I was finishing grad school, I worked two jobs, the first at an infectious disease research center and the second spent tabulating data from death records of women who had been killed by partners. It’s amazing how much data is forgotten in the world, how many trends and progressions are hidden in numbers waiting…
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,…
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