Three weeks ago I returned from a academic conference with a belly ache. I thought I had a stomach flu or at worst, the beginnings of a ulcer. I am 58 years old, a white male at the peak of a wonderful and deeply rewarding career, happily married for the past 22 years and proud of our son, who next year—if I am lucky—I will see graduate from the University of Arizona.

You see the word “lucky” in the previous paragraph? Or in the heading? If you noticed it at all it was probably in passing, just a kind of daily talisman we offer to the greater mystery of life in the hope that we will continue our story and the stories that surround us will continue as well.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for me. When I say “lucky” these days, I do so fully armed with the knowledge that my days are numbered, and while I don’t know the exact number I have left, I do know that seeing our son graduate from college is going to take a little bit of luck in addition to the aggressive treatment I am now receiving for stage four pancreatic cancer.

It wasn’t the stomach flu after all.

I’ve allowed a longer time than usual to pass between blog posts but I have a good reason for it. Put simply, I’ve been enjoying myself. My old college roomie, Stew Auyash, flew in from Ithaca, New York for a long weekend. Along with San, Stew and I did what we have always done together – talked, laughed, cooked, ate, saw a couple of movies, and took a road trip (this time down to Tucson to see Nic, et al.).

No time for blogging during his visit. Then yesterday San and I dropped Stew off at the airport and returned home for some much-needed rest. Today, before I began writing here, I had revisions to do for Chapter 2 in the forthcoming 7^th edition of Eisenberg, Goodall, & Trethewey’s Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint(St. Martins). So I guess you could say that I’ve been busy having fun.

Not a bad thing for this particular Chemosabe. But of course that is only part of my story. This is Cancerland after all.

***

My usual magical practice is to begin each new month with a personal good luck mantra drawn from British folklore and/or old Nantucket superstitions. I say with my very first breath: “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!” and then prepare myself mentally, physically, and soulfully for a month of hopeful good fortune. Today I repeated that magical practice and imagined with it a white rabbit leading me through this month, this “Big November,” the last month of my chemotherapy.

Full disclosure: I believe in magic. I believe in the persuasive power of words, stories, speeches, prayers, gospels, surra, parables, and poetry to change how we look at and understand the world, how we act in it, and how we use such understandings to promote happiness, peace, prosperity, love, and justice.

Why wouldn’t I? I earned a doctorate in rhetoric. I studied with wizened word wizards who culled their knowledge from ancient and modern texts, practices, and even the occult. I have, myself, studied the spells, er, done research from the ancients to the present on the subject of words and their relationships to what the philosopher Richard McKeon once called “thoughts, passions, and actions.” In fact, my fellow word wizard and dear friend who teaches health communication at Ithaca College, Stew Auyash and I just exchanged email this week about Jacqueline de Romilly’s classic book Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (1975), in which exists a compelling discussion of medicine, rhetoric, and magic. Not is this ancient knowledge lost on contemporary scholars who study the close relationship between diagnosis of disease and doctor-prescribed remedies as persuasive efforts designed to elicit belief as well as agreement.

Socrates may have railed against rhetoric in The Gorgias as being “akin to cookery” in relation to “medicine” but he was wrong. He also opined in The Republic that poets ought to be banned from society. There are a host of other things he was wrong about, including the idea he passed along to Aristotle about farting being responsible for death. He was wrong about that, too. Not all philosophy is truth. But as a rhetorician I would say that, wouldn’t I?  

***

What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,
And I'll try not to sing out of key.
I get by with a little help from my friends,
I get high with a little help from my friends,
Going to try with a little help from my friends.

--Lennon/McCartney (1967)

Charlie brought homemade Baklava. He roasts the almonds himself, adds the walnuts, grinds them down, adds honey, and layers the phyllo dough, tops with more honey and one single clove.  Oh my. Delicious! Everyone in the Room of Orange Chairs agrees – this is the best Baklava any of us have ever tasted.

Jan makes me a cup of hot chocolate. It, too, is delicious. I savor it. Let the chemo begin! I know these two treats will be the last food items that taste good to me for at least a week. Maybe more. After that I won’t be able to taste some foods (and no red wine) but I will be able to taste others. Dr. Sud promises me that my taste buds should return about a month or so after my last treatment. I hope he’s right. Just in time for Christmas!

I finish the Baklava and hot chocolate. Lauren sets the IV machine for a fast drip of the pre-chemo liquids, anti-nausea medicine, and whatever else is in this concoction that is designed to prevent the negative side effects. I get these for about an hour and a half, then begin the real poisoning, which runs for five hours, during which time I also am pumped full of Decadron (a glucocorticosteroid), which, in addition to whatever magic it does to those nasty side effects, also produces on my face a healthy-looking tan.

Round Eleven has begun. Strike up the band and let the song begin …

***

Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
~Rossiter Worthington Raymond

Sandra and I lost a friend to colon cancer this week: Rebekah Smith Whitehouse. We met her last summer when we arrived for the first time at the Room of Orange Chairs.

She was perched in one of the chairs waiting for her chemo treatment to begin. “Hi!” she said with her characteristic big smile and genuine joy in her voice. “I’m the poster girl for chemo!” She spread her arms wide and broke into a laugh. We laughed with her.