Dr. Jeniffer Simon, a caring and experienced urologist, Geissinger Medical Center, State College PA showed me on her computer this image–a cancerous tumor surrounding my right kidney, referring me to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “Unless you have surgery quickly, you will be dead in 10 years.” The date: April 5, 2013, […]
Al Thieme
Getting to my kidney operation on August 8th—Part 1
Getting out of bed (and eventually into an automobile) To travel the 257 miles from State College, PA to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (known to New Yorkers as Memorial) less than two blocks from the East River in New York City, I have to get out of bed. What follows is a photographic recreation […]
My personal experience with cancer—Cancer III, II, I
New York, New York, Saturday, April 13, 2013: My third cancer is new. It did not present itself as a suspicious sign the way the lump (tumor) did under my right arm leading to a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s disease followed by major surgery and two rounds of radiation treatment when I was 28 years old. […]