[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
motor skills.
Shapiro could see that I was beginning to get truly frightened. "Look, nobody ever wants brain surgery," he
said. "If you aren't scared, you aren't normal."
Shapiro assured me that I would bounce back from the surgery quickly: I would spend just one day in
intensive care and, after another day of recovery, I would get straight down to business with my
chemotherapy.
That night, my mother, Bill, Och, Chris, and the rest of the group took me across the street to the mall to
get something to eat at a nice continental-cuisine restaurant. I couldn't eat much. I still had the dots on my
head from the frameless stereotactics, and a hospital bracelet on my wrist, but I no longer cared how I
looked. So what if I had dots on my head? I was just happy to get out of the hospital and move around.
People stared, but it didn't matter. Tomorrow, my head would be shaved.
HOW DO YOU CONFRONT YOUR OWN DEATH? sometimes I think the blood-brain barrier is more
than just physical, it's emotional, too. Maybe there's a protective mechanism in our psyche that prevents us
from accepting our mortality unless we absolutely have to.
The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself,
if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of
character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided
that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better but at the same time I understood
that the cancer didn't care.
I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had
developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual
person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person,
and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to
my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I
believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing
there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in
a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he
didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was going
to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."
I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries I believed in that. I believed in them. A
person like Dr. Einhorn, that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an
experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his
intelligence and his research.
Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this
much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every
article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe what other choice was there? We do it
every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and
long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the
briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever
I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.
Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will
beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the
world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment,
these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now
why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and
loss of spirit. So, I believed.
WHEN YOU CAN'T REMEMBER SOMETHING, THERE'S A reason why. I've blocked out much of
what I thought and felt the morning of my brain surgery, but one thing I remember clearly is the date,
October 25th, because when it was over I was so glad to be alive. My mother and Och and Bill Stapleton
came into my room at 6 A.M. to wake me up, and various nurses came by to prepare me for the surgery.
Before you undergo a brain operation, you have a memory test. The doctors say, "We're going to tell you
three simple words, and try to remember them for as long as you can." Some brain-tumor patients have
lapses and can't remember what they were told ten minutes ago. If the tumor has affected you, it's the little
things that you can't recall. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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motor skills.
Shapiro could see that I was beginning to get truly frightened. "Look, nobody ever wants brain surgery," he
said. "If you aren't scared, you aren't normal."
Shapiro assured me that I would bounce back from the surgery quickly: I would spend just one day in
intensive care and, after another day of recovery, I would get straight down to business with my
chemotherapy.
That night, my mother, Bill, Och, Chris, and the rest of the group took me across the street to the mall to
get something to eat at a nice continental-cuisine restaurant. I couldn't eat much. I still had the dots on my
head from the frameless stereotactics, and a hospital bracelet on my wrist, but I no longer cared how I
looked. So what if I had dots on my head? I was just happy to get out of the hospital and move around.
People stared, but it didn't matter. Tomorrow, my head would be shaved.
HOW DO YOU CONFRONT YOUR OWN DEATH? sometimes I think the blood-brain barrier is more
than just physical, it's emotional, too. Maybe there's a protective mechanism in our psyche that prevents us
from accepting our mortality unless we absolutely have to.
The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself,
if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of
character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided
that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better but at the same time I understood
that the cancer didn't care.
I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had
developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual
person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person,
and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to
my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I
believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing
there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in
a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he
didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was going
to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."
I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries I believed in that. I believed in them. A
person like Dr. Einhorn, that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an
experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his
intelligence and his research.
Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this
much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every
article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe what other choice was there? We do it
every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and
long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the
briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever
I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.
Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will
beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the
world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment,
these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now
why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and
loss of spirit. So, I believed.
WHEN YOU CAN'T REMEMBER SOMETHING, THERE'S A reason why. I've blocked out much of
what I thought and felt the morning of my brain surgery, but one thing I remember clearly is the date,
October 25th, because when it was over I was so glad to be alive. My mother and Och and Bill Stapleton
came into my room at 6 A.M. to wake me up, and various nurses came by to prepare me for the surgery.
Before you undergo a brain operation, you have a memory test. The doctors say, "We're going to tell you
three simple words, and try to remember them for as long as you can." Some brain-tumor patients have
lapses and can't remember what they were told ten minutes ago. If the tumor has affected you, it's the little
things that you can't recall. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]