7/7/95

So How Are You?

You can't blame the cat for what's ailing me.

    Some topics just don't belong in a humor column. Some topics are so humorless, even the mention of a word is taboo.
    Cancer is such a word.
    Nothing funny about cancer.
    That's what I thought, until a few weeks ago, when I was told I have it.
    I wasn't laughing when I first heard, certainly not when I began chemotherapy a month ago (June 11); in fact, the first time I laughed was when a fellow afflictee suggested I write a humor column about it. By the time the third or fourth cancer victim urged me to see the lighter side, I came to realize two things: humor is strength in sufferance; and I had actually had some pretty funny moments.
    Truth is, I'm among the luckiest of the unlucky: I've got a curable case of lymphoma and the doctors figure I have 50 years to live, which gives me time for great-grandchildren and perhaps 1,300 more of these columns.
    I was luckier than I deserved to be: although I had been a heavy smoker, the doctors all assured me -- grudgingly -- that the habit was not to blame. I couldn't even wallow in guilt.
    At first it was thought my cat was to blame. Swollen lymph glands could be the result of cat-scratch fever, I was told, which made sense because for years the two of us had been pawing each other in gladiatorial sport, and if I'd been keeping score I'd say she outscratched me something like 10,000-0.
    I dreaded telling my mother: she loathes cats.
    I was ready to accept the diagnosis, swallow a pill, and maybe never even tell my mother. But Doctor Joe wanted second opinions from the entire medical field. "Tests," he announced.
    What prodding, probing, pricking procedures I didn't go through just to be told that they didn't know what I had, but that cat-scratch fever couldn't be ruled out. I even had to undergo an AIDS test, and just to show what I thought of that, I brought my kids along to pick up the results. (They were negative.)
    After weeks of squirming around like a porcupine in a needlestack, I cut a deal with my maker that I would never claw with the cat again if I could be guaranteed no more tests, no more needles.
    That's when they decided to operate. They pulled a node out of my groin, and I went home with a 5-cm railroad scar to show my four-year-old girls.
    "But Daddy," one of them said, clearly shaken, "did the nurses and the doctors see your penis?"
    "Well, uh, yeah, I guess they did."
    "And did they laugh?"
    I didn't tell them what the medics would be seeing next, during the bone biopsy: happily, while I was braying in agony at being impaled on a hypodermic pole, nobody laughed at my butt.
    I was finally in the clear -- well, there was just a CT scan to do, but, my wife guaranteed me most assuringly, that would be downright boring.
    It wasn't.
    I was given three liters of a concoction to drink "within an hour." They advised me to "go to the bathroom as often as possible."
    They declined to be any more specific than that; I, of course, understood that I was expected to flush out my bladder.
    Wrong end.
    I emptied the jug in 10 minutes flat, and returned it to the nurse. She was mortified. "But I told you 'within an hour!'"
    "All right, then," I said amiably, "you want me to drink more for the next 50 minutes?"
    "NO!!"
    I still wasn't catching on. The nurse, by now joined by several other concerned staffers, urged me to walk around until I felt I had to go. So I walked. Three times around the building I strolled, enjoying the noonday sun and --
    Uh-oh.
    I dashed in through a door marked "EMERGENCY ONLY" and made it to the bathroom plotzing like you should never know.
    After a good half-hour I stepped out into the waiting room, oozing all the suavete I could muster.
    No one even smiled.

A WEEK before my 39th birthday, I got the news that it was cancer.
    Even as I was trying not to cry, not to faint, not to throw up, I couldn't help thinking of a maudlin quip I once said, years ago, at the height of the AIDS hysteria. "Thank God," I now heard my brain say, "it's only cancer."
    Incredibly, at that horrible moment, my pity was diverted to my wife. Not that I am so selflessly compassionate; but in the emotional maelstrom of the following minutes, Wendy revealed that she had already known for four days -- but not that it was curable. She had called the hematologist for biopsy results and was told that "In no civilized country would a doctor give results over the phone. But I'll tell you this: it's not benign."
    "And for four days you suffered alone," I groaned.
    "And I couldn't even be nice to you," she said tearfully, "because then you'd suspect."
    (We were later assured by a nurse that the hematologist is really not so heartless. "You should be grateful," she said, "he's only nice to terminal patients.")
    For several days I couldn't face telling anyone, until I was advised that it's best to come out with it. (Now, of course, the whole bloody country has to know.)
    Soon enough the grapevine took over, which presented a bit of problem: I became acutely aware of everybody's nuances. When someone said "How are you?" I tried to figure if it was a greeting or a question.
    It became a guessing game. A friend who saw me for the first time after I'd heard the verdict said: "Gawd, you look like death warmed over"; I guessed she hadn't heard. A chap in England, with whom I share a love of words, mailed me a few new finds including "Defluvium -- a complete shedding of some part, such as hair, due to a disease"; I guessed he couldn't have heard I'd soon be defluving.
    Then there was the conversation with my friend Zeva. She phoned the day before I began chemotherapy. She herself was in remission after a terrible battle with the disease, so I guessed she must have heard.
    She began the conversation by howling "You shit!" Now I guessed she hadn't heard.
    "Hi, Zeva. Bet you're mad I haven't called since you got cancer."
    "Yup."
    "You're right," I said calmly. "I have this serious character flaw that I can't face up to people I love who are dying."
    "Yeah, but I pulled through, no thanks to you."
    "So, should we talk about you, or do you care to ask about me?"
    "All right, you shit, how are you?"
    "Nice of you to ask. I've got cancer."
    She forgave me.
    A couple of days earlier, I resisted the temptation to tell another friend, Zev. Because of the timing, it would have been outrageously tactless. We were playing each other in the Israel Scrabble Championships. Whoever won this game would take home the trophy and national bragging rights. Both of us, desperate for any edge, were silently psyching ourselves up and each other down.
    It would have been so effective to blurt out the news right then -- because he nearly died of cancer.
    Zev won, and a few days later, when I finally told him, we agreed that chemotheraphy must be the secret to winning at Scrabble.
    Indeed, during the chemo, Wendy and I passed the time by playing a couple of games. I won both. For some reason, the entire ward was cheering for her.
    Makes you wonder which of us was the one, er, attached to a drip.
    Before they hooked me up to the chemo, a nurse warned me that among the many possible side effects was sterility. She asked if I'd like to cryogenically freeze some sperm. I looked at her warily; I'd had enough of medical procedures. "It depends," I said. "Do you freeze the sperm before it comes out, or after?"
    I didn't suffer at all after the first chemotherapy, thanks to a wonderful anti-nausea pill. However, I was only given three of the pills. When I was down to the last one I went to the pharmacy to load up with a good supply. "That'll be 74 shekels," said the pharmacist, "-- for each pill."
    I blanched. "At that price," I grumbled, "I'll feel more nauseous if I take 'em."

NEWS OF my misfortune coursed through my social circles like these benevolent poisons through my veins.
    The phone rang off the hook. People who understood that we'd had enough of the phone phoned other people, who phoned us to say that these other people had phoned, which meant we had to phone 'em back.
    Some people have been unable to speak to me about it. I forgive them.
    Others, adversaries whom I'd long been unable to speak to, crashed through the ice and assuaged me with concern.
    Cancer heals. My father had had a running feud with someone in his shul in Petah Tikva. Not even the rabbi could bend their wills. One Shabbat, my father recited a prayer for my recovery. His antagonist made his way through the congregation and publicly, emotionally, embraced my father.
    My parents were not among the first to hear the news. They were traveling through Canada when the verdict came through. For two weeks I agonized over how to tell them; I practised on others, I consulted a social worker and a psychologist.
    A few days after they returned, they came to visit us, bearing gifts and gossip and recollections of their trip. I was tearing apart inside, waiting for the right moment.
    "So," my mother said brightly, "how have you been?"
    "Well actually," I began. 
    She wept. After three heart-wrenching hours of talking, crying, hugging, she admonished me. "When I ask how you are," she said chokingly, "you always just say 'Fine.' I didn't expect you to tell me."
    She would have been happier blaming the cat.
    Telling my children was a lot easier, because they didn't comprehend. I didn't look sick, so how sick could I be? We explained that I would be losing my hair ג€“ and that really interested them. 
    A couple of days later, one of them asked why I still had my hair. I assured her that it may take some time.
    She was aggreived. "It better fall out soon," she pouted petulantly. "I already promised my friends."
    Laughing about cancer has strengthened me for the fight. (Even as I write these very words, Wendy brought me a card that just arrived in the mail. The card reads: "While you're recovering, remember -- laugh, and the world laughs with you... Complain, and you get a lot more attention.")
    Laughter really is the best medicine, even -- no, especially -- when the chuckles are morbid.
    An economic reporter at the Post was impressed that having cancer exempts me from paying income tax. "You see? That's what makes this country great," he said. "Everywhere else, the two sure things in life are death and taxes. Here, it's one or the other."
    Or as I see it, neither.