Forty-Seven Years Old and Feeling Fine
In the summer of 1992, I noticed a hardening in my abdomen. I was 47 years old and feeling fine, so my first suspicion was that it must be the result of too many sit-ups in my regular work-out. I changed my workout routine, hoping that would do the trick, but the hard spot continued to grow. It was still growing in August of that year, which bothered me enough to schedule an appointment with an internist.
The doctor felt the growth and suggested that I get a CT scan, which I did. When the scans came back, my doctor couldn't properly interpret them, so he sent me to a general surgeon. The surgeon took a look at the CT film and said that he wasn't sure if it was cancerous, but that he'd operate on me to remove the growth and "anything else that was in its way." Neither my wife, Monica, nor I were inspired by such imprecise guesswork, so when my urologist mentioned that he could get me an appointment with the well-known head of surgical oncology at a big New York hospital, I took him up on the offer.
"It's Inoperable"
The oncologist showed my scans to one of his radiologists, who immediately recognized the growth as a liposarcoma (a cancer of the fat tissue, usually originating in the arms, legs, or body cavities). Once he had received this information, the doctor sat back down at his desk and told me, "There isn't a doctor in the country that could remove this tumor. It's inoperable. It would require about 11 hours of surgery and would involve so many critical organ systems, you wouldn't survive the procedure. I recommend that you go home and get your financial and spiritual affairs in order." The way he said it, plainly, with no sympathy whatsoever, it was like he was ordering a pizza.
It was a total shock to me. That was it. My life was over. He hadn't given me the smallest glimmer of hope. Not to mention, I was totally unprepared. I never imagined that it might be cancer. I was feeling too good for it to have been anything that serious.
Chemotherapy Fails
A medical oncologist from the hospital started me on intensive chemotherapy treatments, with the hope that they would shrink the tumor, which, at that point, had grown to be the size of a basketball.
I broke the news to my two daughters, who were both away at college, and our son, who was in 10th grade at the time. I just told them that I wasn't going to be around. There wasn't much I could tell them other than the truth. I wasn't going to lie to them.
There was some shrinkage of the tumor as a result of the chemotherapy, but not enough to change my general prognosis. After the fourth round of treatments, my oncologist said that I'd soon have to stop to give my body a break from the chemo, after which I could continue. When I asked what would happen after that, he said that hopefully the tumor will stop growing for awhile. "And if not, then what?" I asked. He said that, to be honest, one of these days the drugs would stop working altogether. Hearing this, I lost control. I began to yell, telling him that this was no way to live, just sitting around, waiting to die. I said, "I would rather die on the operating room table, then live like this!"
