Tuesday was my quarterly cancer check-up, and we had decided some weeks prior to celebrate the occasion with fried chicken and champagne, a special gift bottle from Sue, a lovely lady and friend at the gym. Fried chicken has become a rare and special meal for me, given the low regard that fried foods must […]
Continue readingSurvivor
July 8, 2013 
16 Comments
As a cub reporter at The Washington Post, I wrote my share of obituaries, and, back then, The Post required a cause-of-death in every obit. “He died of cancer,” a family member would sometimes offer, “but we don’t want that in the newspaper.” And more than once, after I explained The Post’s policy, families preferred […]
Continue readingHeck Cancer
January 7, 2013 8 Comments
It happened again, this time at the gym. Karen inquired, sincerely — not one of those ducks and drakes how-ya-doin’s — about my health, about how things are going for me, and it was with some reluctance that I confided that my October cancer check-up was “as good as it gets”: no evidence of disease. […]
Continue readingWaking NED, Divine!
October 23, 2012 18 Comments
My quarterly PSA tests have always exerted a gravitational pull on me well beyond their intrinsic strength. That’s because they tell me how well I’m doing in fending off my Stage 4 prostate cancer. Call them my report cards. And yesterday’s test had no more, no less gravity than any of the 22 other PSA […]
Continue readingKeeping Abreast of Cancer
September 15, 2012 7 Comments
Cancer is a disease of the body, but it also afflicts the mind. In the body, it grows at the expense of normal cells, healthy tissues and functioning organs. From the mind, it steals. Steals security, normality and a presumed sense of well being. I’m not alone among cancerians when any random ache, any inexplicable […]
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Hope
September 12, 2012 1 Comment
As a young reporter for The Washington Post, I had many memorable times in Washington, D.C., but this past weekend (Sep 7-8) was my most special time ever in the city. I was honored (and humbled) to participate in the Milken Institute’s “Celebration of Science” as a guest of Dan Zenka and the Prostate Cancer […]
Continue readingWaiting
July 17, 2012 25 Comments
I’d be lying if I said I had looked forward to yesterday’s quarterly cancer check-in. The day dawned with dread, heavy dread, born of a certain conviction that my blood test would confirm an increasing presence of PSA — and, therefore, evidence of cancer on the advance. My only jot of hope lay in how […]
Continue readingThe Commentariat
 | Kelly Olson on Breakin’ Bad |
| Craig Pynn on Living with Cancer | |
 | Sue Brown on Living with Cancer |
 | tncolmd on Living with Cancer |
 | Sherry Nebel on Living with Cancer |
 | Andy Grant on Living with Cancer |
 | D. Keith Humphries on Living with Cancer |
 | Hazel Goldberg on Living with Cancer |
My First Cancer 
S.R.O.
Monday at the Cancer Clinic—I’ve never experienced so much cancer on display, never witnessed so many visible signs of it. It starts in the parking garage at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. I am in space D353, and the couple in D352 walk with me to the elevators. She is chemo-bald. Straight to the lab services […]
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