Vodoo Doll

Whoever has the voodoo doll inflicting sudden pains at random moments, could you kindly return it? Or at least, pull out a few pins? Thank you.

Coda

No one can take anything from me.

I am completely emptied out like a deep exhale. I inhabit the pause of woodwind musicians turning the page to play the coda. Empty, every breath I take becomes sweet like honey, intoxicating like wine, refreshing like the laughter of mountain water tripping over waterfalls.

I could have died when I was first diagnosed with cancer more than two years ago. I could not eat. I had lost 30 pounds. Death was not far off.

Consider that I died then. That means every day since then has been a gift. More than 800 days and counting. This day, this moment, sitting in Starbucks listening to music, reading bedtime stories to my daughter, waking to help my teenage son get an application out, hearing my wife laugh about the antics of our crazy St. Bernard -- all a gift. I have lost nothing. I have gained it all.

I am not counting down the days. I am counting up the moments that I have been blessed to live in such grace.

Swimmingly

What's the hardest part of swimming a mile? The first 15 laps. At that point, the whole mile stretches ahead. It seems impossible. Your breath is short. You feel you need to stop. Each lap is the same so there should be no difference -- in fact the later laps should be harder -- yet the test is not for the body but the mind. The mind looks at the whole mile and balks at the road ahead. But you swim one stroke, one lap at a time. By the time you reach 50, you have a flow and it is hard to stop until you reach 72.

Cancer is daunting. It is not a sprint but a marathon, a triathlon, just when you finish biking and running, you find yourself swimming. One stroke after another. One day, one second, one moment: the now. Keep your head in the right place and the body will follow.

Greg Anderson says cancer is not a thing but a process. You don't "have cancer," you are "cancering." You need to participate in the process, like swimming. One stroke after another. There is nothing else except this next breath of air. Touching the side of the pool and turning around. Churning through the blue water, I remember taking swimming lessons at the Y as a kid. I am grateful to my parents for teaching me how to swim. How could I have known what this would mean so many years later in this pool?

I think of my mother swimming back and forth in summer across the iced-tea-colored cedar water of Bellplain Park in the pine barrens of New Jersey. Then I see her face and she says peacefully: "I died, so maybe this is your time to die" -- then she adds with a familiar flash of her eyes, a mischievous smile reflecting her inimitable humor -- "or maybe not." I smile in a way that gives me great hope, and my tears suddenly mix with the purifying chlorine, unseen in the pool where many others fight their unknown battles, swimming again their personal tides, moving forward one stroke at a time.

I cry, but do not miss a stroke. The road ahead is daunting, but I keep swimming. As long as I can do this, I am alive. My body and mind are strong.

So, how am I doing? Swimmingly.

My Vietnam

Cancer is a struggle with guerrilla forces scattered in the jungles, like Vietnam. Cancer lives among peace-loving civilians, like insurgents in Iraq. Such wars are difficult or impossible to win by conventional means, although we try. There is bound to be collateral damage. In Vietnam, we dropped napalm and Agent Orange to defoliate the jungles, so we could bomb villages and rout out the enemy forces. It was a technological solution to a distinctly human problem. And it didn't work. It devastated millions of civilians, destroyed societies and ripped at the fabric that was needed to create whole communities, taking years to heal, if ever.

We approach cancer the same way, dropping chemicals across the jungle, and using surgical strikes and radiation to flush out the insurgents. The first chemotherapy arose from war technology, experiments with mustard gas in World War II. Maybe there is a time for this -- could something so many people believe in be wrong? -- but conventional war did not work in Vietnam and seems unlikely to be effective in Iraq, where our concern now is to leave in a way that minimizes the damage we have done. Just as people believe in war, they believe that we can use violence to destroy cancer and set the stage for health. I respect the power and industrial efficiency of these approaches, but do they recognize the true richness of disease and healing? Do they look for short-term gains - mission accomplished -- while ignoring the long-term implications? Each battle destroys infrastructure and trust, inciting future revolutions, setting us up for the next war.

Perhaps modern technology is not the solution. Perhaps napalm and bombings will not bring about the healing that we seek. Perhaps cancer is personal, and we must meet our own raw karma, one on one. Not General Patton but Mahatma Gandhi.

I walk through the jungle. There is real danger here. It is clear that there are forces trying to kill me. I am no fool. I recognize this. I am sick. I am tired. I am hungry. I face death at every turn. But the cancer is not outside myself. It is within. It is my Vietnam. It my heart of darkness, the meeting with Mista Kurtz in a jungle that redefines you or consumes you. There is no substitute for the journey, no shortcuts, no unmanned vehicles to fly above the fray. You need boots on the ground to come face to face with yourself in the stark horror of real life. This is not a war. It is a crucible we must pass through on our way to either death or new life.