As a consequence of radiation treatment for cancer, I am experiencing a side effect. Having difficulty swallowing. Frequent all-night vomiting. Must go to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan to have my esophagus stretched. It is a painful, uncomfortable, and lengthy procedure. However, afterward, I will be able to cut the mustard some more.
kidney cancer
Fear
I am afraid. The fear is linked to the CT scan I took on Thursday–in turn linked to my three experiences with cancer. In August 2013, Dr. Paul Russo (at Memorial Sloan Kettering Medical Center in New York City) removed a 7 centimeter tumor surrounding my right kidney. Pathology confirmed kidney cancer. While discussing the […]
Help me fix my teeth
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAK_-7mw_o8[/youtube] My mother would add the word please to this request for financial assistance–assistance to save me from false teeth. Both Mother and Father died in Jewish old age homes with their artificial teeth in a glass, unable to express just where their dentures did not fit or what was required to avoid pain. Nor […]
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s inspiring inaugural address
Inaugural Address of Mayor Bill de Blasio: “Progress for New York” January 1, 2014 Editorial notes: 1. Finally, out of the politics of despair and retrenchment, a new leader has emerged from the Democratic party unafraid to express the values in which I believe. In this, Bill de Blasio’s inaugural address, he states: “Fiorello […]
December motto plus optional isolation
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, […]
My first cancer survival at age 28
I have been describing my third cancer experience at age 65 when I was diagnosed in April in State College PA and had a successful operation in August in New York City at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.. This is an account of my first cancer survival at age 28. How did I survive cancer three times? How was I able to father two daughters after massive radiation treatment? Why was cancer treatment responsible for my becoming a paraplegic?
What was my emotional state during these three experiences which otherwise might have forced me to concentrate on death rather than enjoying life?
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Answers may be difficult to provide, but what follows is my first attempt to use language for the ineffable.
Two years after my experience with Hodgkin’s disease, my publication on the subject in The New York Times, my appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America, I received a book contract and proceeded to interview formally (receiving signed releases) and on tape the accounts of….
Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro, a Day of Madness,” Cherubino overture on the delight of love
Cherubino is a valet to the evil Count. The Count is trying to assert his “right” to sleep with the bride before her wedding day. First there is a scene in which the groom is evaluating the bed on which he will deflower his bride. Afterward: “Cherubino arrives…describing his emerging infatuation with all women, particularly […]
How do I feel?
I do not feel real. There is a disconnect between my body, which does not feel good, and my mind, which does not feel good. It is six in the morning. I am listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes; I am beginning to be not unhappy, but capable of realizing happiness will come. My body feels as if […]